


Ticket to Anywhere

by Zara_Zee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU World so expect cultural historical and geographical differences, Alpha Benny Lafitte, Alpha Sam Winchester, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Bottom Dean Winchester, Dean Has a Daughter, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, Drama & Romance, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Omega Dean Winchester, Psuedo-Science, References to M-Preg, References to past heat-related non-con, References to prior still-birth, Self-Worth Issues, Unique Biology, Victim Blaming, Werewolf Biology, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: When their alpha-male-sire dies of liver failure, Dean announces that he wants to use the money from John Winchester’s estate to buy a bed-and-breakfast in the small fishing village of Jean-Lafitte, Louisiana. After everything his omega-brother has done for him, alpha-male Sam can’t say no.  Despite privately thinking it’s a bad idea, Sam agrees to move interstate with Dean and Dean’s four-year-old omega-daughter, Millie, to help run the B&B, in between his classes at UNO.When they get to town and find out that the supposedBed-and-Breakfastis actually aBait and BBQattached to a run-down house, Sam’s sure he’s going to be proved right.He didn’t count on Dean’s stubborn determination or on his brother’s slowly growing romance with alpha-male Benny Lafitte; local fisherman, short order cook, and descendent of the town’s namesake—the infamous 19th century pirate, Jean Lafitte.When Millie’s alpha-male-sire turns up unexpectedly and tries to claim both Dean and his daughter, Dean is determined to keep his family safe. Can Dean earn the happily ever after he deserves—or will it all blow away like dust in the wind?
Relationships: Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester
Comments: 41
Kudos: 165
Collections: SPN Meant to Be Master Collection





	1. Starting from Zero

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Don't own. Just playing in the sandbox. Story, chapter titles and prefaces from _Fast Car_ by Tracy Chapman.
> 
> Written for the SPN_Meant-to-be Challenge on Livejournal and inspired by the following prompt:
> 
> _“While Emma Collins wonders who in their right mind would use her hard-won divorce settlement to purchase a bed-and-breakfast down in the Ozarks, her free-spirited sister Katy fantasizes dreamily about how this move to a small town will be just the thing for her six-year-old son, Josh. And, as usual, Emma is right. But it is not until they drive to Warbler Lake, Missouri, to take over Bitsy's B &B that they realize just how right she's been. In this part of the country, B&B stands for Bait and BBQ! The girls know little enough about running a bed-and-breakfast, but a bait-and-BBQ? With their money and futures sunk into a run-down, roadside rattletrap, the girls have no choice but to roll up their sleeves and get to work. But as they settle in and get to know the difference between fatheads, night crawlers, mealworms and shiners, no one is more surprised than they are when they actually get the place up and running. But trouble is brewing. Katy's ex-husband is having second thoughts about the custody arrangements for Josh, and he fully intends to get him back. With the prospect of losing the little boy, the sisters face another challenge, only this time it's Katy who proves that she, too, can solve a problem.”_

_You got a fast car_   
_I want a ticket to anywhere_   
_Maybe we make a deal_   
_Maybe together we can get somewhere_   
_Anyplace is better_   
_Starting from zero got nothing to lose_   
_Maybe we'll make something_   
_Me, myself I got nothing to prove_

\--

It was overcast the evening of John’s funeral.

Aside from Dean, Millie and Sam, the only attendees were Bobby down from Sioux Falls, and Ellen and Jo down from Nebraska. Dean was grateful to them for making the effort.

Dean closed his eyes as the local _Hiereus_ drew down the moon, calling upon Luna to enter John’s body and take his soul; what was left of it, anyway. In the end his father was so pickled in alcohol that he couldn’t even shift, not even at Full Moon. Dean shuddered and opened his eyes. To be cut off from Luna like that…he couldn’t even begin to imagine how ragged his father’s soul must’ve been by the time his liver finally gave out.

The _Hiereus_ lit the ceremonial torch and set John Winchester’s funeral pyre ablaze.

Millie squeezed him tightly with her tiny arms and snuggled against him, knowing that he took comfort from her nearness.

“S’ok, Omma,” she said.

And it _was_ okay. Dean felt like an asshole for saying it, but John dying was an opportunity. Without their old man around their necks like a millstone he and Sammy could finally get out of Lawrence; could finally _do_ something with their lives.

Still, Dean’s alpha was dead and his wolf wanted to howl at the full moon. Tonight, though, was for human ritual. They would let their wolves out to pay their respects tomorrow night.

Eventually, when the flames began to die, the _Hiereus_ made the sign of the crescent moon over John’s grave, signalling that the fire had set his soul free to begin anew, and then he bid them all to go in peace.

Dean put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and guided him back to the car. He strapped Millie into her car seat and straightened when he felt Bobby come up beside him.

The old mechanic pulled him in for a rough hug. “I’ll see you back at the house, son,” he said.

They left the cemetery in a convoy of two, Dean leading in the Impala and Bobby following in his truck with Ellen and Jo.

Missouri Moseley was waiting for them on the doorstep with an apple pie. She hugged them all fiercely and then shooed them into the house.

Dean smiled faintly. Missouri had been their social worker for over a decade before she’d retired, and despite the fact that both Sam and Dean had towered over her for years, she’d always been fierce.

She’d always been pretty handy with a wooden spoon too, but Dean didn’t hold that against her; he didn’t envy anyone the job of trying to deal with the angry, rebellious kid he’d been after his omega hormones had kicked in at puberty. Missouri had kept him in line just enough that the State hadn’t permanently removed him from John’s custody. Sure, he’d done a brief stint in Sonny’s Home for Omegas when he was sixteen, but between Sonny helping Dean to get his shit together, and Missouri helping John to clean up his act, he’d been allowed to return home to his family. He was grateful for that to this day and always would be.

Missouri handed her apple pie off to Dean, and then the beta-wolf scooped Millie up and bustled into the living room with her, like the surrogate grandmom she’d become.

Dean headed to the kitchen to begin organizing the food for the wake and Ellen followed him.

“How you holding up, sweetheart?” she asked as Dean took a tray of burgers and sausages out of the fridge.

“Honestly?” Dean set the tray of meat down on the counter and pulled out a bowl of pre-chopped onion rings. “I’m relieved. It makes me feel like an asshole to say it, but the last few years,” he sighed. “I kept Millie from seeing the worst of it, but that would’ve got harder as she got older.”

Ellen took a lettuce and several tomatoes out of the vegetable crisper and began to wash them. “He always called Millie ‘our silver lining’,” she commented.

Dean scrunched up his nose, his expression pained. “When he was sober, yeah. He doted on her. But he’s always been a mean drunk. Always knows just what to say to cut you the worst. I didn’t want that for her, you know? Life’s hard enough for us, without that.”

Ellen snorted. “So…inheritance laws being what they are, I’m guessing Sam…?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Least Papa had the decency to wait until Sammy turned eighteen to kick the bucket.”

Dean heard the screen door slam, following by Rufus’s booming voice offering Sam condolences.

“Sorry I couldn’t make the cremation. Good to see you Bobby. Where are the omegas? In the kitchen?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “They’re just organizing the food.”

A moment later, Rufus appeared in the kitchen door. “Sorry about your old man, Dean.”

Dean nodded. “Thanks.”

Rufus cleared his throat. “I, uh, bought a bottle of Johnny Blue, figured we could drink a toast. And then I realized maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, what with, you know, how he…anyway. Should I give it to Sam?”

Dean stared at his father’s old army buddy, his heart sinking just a little at the alpha’s ingrained attitudes.

“You should give it to _me_ ,” he said firmly. 

“Right,” Rufus glanced at Ellen, standing hands-on-hips, eyebrows raised, and had the good grace to look embarrassed.

Dean took the offered bottle without comment and got down seven whiskey tumblers.

“Jo’s eighteen, right?” he said to Ellen.

Ellen nodded.

As alphas, both Jo and Sam were legally allowed to drink alcohol at eighteen. Something about their metabolisms processing it far better than either humans or non-alpha _weres_ could. Humans and betas had to wait until they were twenty-one to be legally allowed to drink and omegas had to wait until they were twenty-five and fuck that noise.

Dean scowled as he got out a tray for the whiskey and tumblers.

He’d been told his whole life that he was lucky he’d been born after the government ratified the twenty-fifth amendment in 1967, revising amendments thirteen to fifteen. The new amendment stipulated that omega _lycans_ were legally American citizens, who couldn’t be treated simply as chattel. They were, however, some provisos. Omegas couldn’t vote until they were twenty-five, they couldn’t drink until they were twenty-five and they couldn’t join the armed forces. This, the alpha _lycans_ had insisted, was to protect the _delicate constitutions_ of the omegas. (Dean ground his teeth in old familiar frustration.) The amendment also made it a legal requirement for Omegas to have an alpha guardian, which had been sold to the majority human government as a measure to protect omegas during their heats. Dean called bullshit on all of it. The omega provisions weren’t about protection; they were about control. They were about keeping omegas as dependent as possible on alphas for as long as possible. They were about alphas keeping omegas as close to chattel as the government would allow.

In the living room, Dean handed out glasses and poured everyone a shot.

Everyone looked expectantly at Sam and Dean watched as his little brother got a very definite deer in the headlights expression and looked desperately to Dean for direction.

Dean snorted. “Our alpha-sire did his best,” he said, straightening his back and raising his chin, defying anyone to deny him the right to speak. “And I ain’t gonna sugar coat it; sometimes his best was pretty shitty. Losing our mom the way we did, he never really recovered from that. And having an omega son didn’t make things any easier for him. He loved us and he tried to do right. I just wish life had been kinder to him. In Luna’s name, please all raise your glass to John Winchester.”

“To John Winchester,” everyone murmured.

“Well said,” Missouri added.

“Hear, hear,” Bobby agreed.

Dean ducked his head at the praise and winced slightly when he saw that Rufus’s brow was furrowed and he was not-quite glaring at Sam.

“Time to fire up the grill!” he said, faux-hearty and tried to hustle his brother into the kitchen.

“A word, Sam,” Rufus said, before turning to Dean. “He’ll be along in a moment, Dean.”

Rufus’s tone brooked no dissent, and Dean reminded himself that his baby brother was actually an adult alpha so he gave a curt nod and went and got the meat and the onion rings.

The Winchester house was old and run down, the paint, once white, now greyed with age and peeling from the clapboard siding. The house had a wide wrap-around veranda, on which sat the grill and an old sofa, along with a couple of green plastic lawn chairs. There wasn’t much back yard to speak of, just a small square of concrete and a couple of dead pot plants, and the front yard wasn’t so much _lawn_ as dirt with a few weed patches.

Dean fired up the grill and got the meat and onion rings going. He glanced in through the living room window and watched Sam and Rufus having their animated discussion. Eventually, Sam threw his arms up in the air and moved out of Dean’s line of sight.

A short moment later, the screen door squeaked open and Sam came outside with two beers.

“Thanks for before,” Sam said, as he handed the long neck off, condensed water dripping down its side. “You’re the oldest; that speech was right to come from you. And you know I hate all that _alpha_ bullshit. ”

“No arguments here,” Dean said. “I take it Rufus didn’t approve?”

Sam shrugged.

“He’s worried because I’m so young. And you know; your history. He thinks if I don’t start acting ‘alpha enough’ to keep you in line, the state’ll come in and take you and Millie. Assign you to an alpha guardian of their choosing; maybe send Millie to a Beta couple to raise.”

Dean felt his incisors and nails begin to lengthen. “Over my dead fuckin’ body,” he growled.

Sam nodded, pulled a face. “Yeah. But he’s got a point. We might have to…do some acting sometimes. You know. If we get an official visit. Or if we’re in public.”

Dean made a noise that Sam could take for agreement if he chose. For his part, Dean had no intention of playing the good little submissive omega; _ever_. Millie was his and he would fight for her, to the death, and Luna protect anyone who got in his way.

Sam sighed. “Could you at least _try_ not to piss off any alpha assessors they send around?”

Dean raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Try not to piss off any alphas? I’m sorry, have you met me?”

Rufus and Bobby chose that moment to come out onto the porch and Rufus was at Dean’s side in two large strides, his hand coming down hard on Dean’s ass.

“Ow! What the fuck?” Dean whirled to face him, spatula in hand.

Rufus’s eyes were tinged with alpha-red and he was looming large over Dean, his incisors lengthened. Dean felt his own lengthen in response as he went toe-to-toe with the alpha.

Rufus sighed and stepped back, eyes and teeth returning to normal. “Your instincts are all wrong, boy,” he said.

Dean scowled. “You ever consider that maybe it’s society that’s fucked up, not me?”

Rufus shook his head. “I blame your Papa. He put too much responsibility on your shoulders, too young. You’ve been fighting and protecting your whole life when you should’ve been nurtured.”

“You know it’s true, Dean,” Missouri said, coming outside with Ellen, Jo and Millie.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said. “Prolonged exposure to trauma rewired my brain. I’ve been told a million times.”

“You need a real alpha to care for you,” Rufus insisted.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Oh please. You really think some new alpha stepping in and trying to force me to submit to them is gonna change me?”

“I said ‘care for’ not ‘force to submit’.”

Dean snorted. “Right. Well if I ever find this mythical unicorn of an alpha whose idea of ‘care’ doesn’t involve forcibly bending me to their will, you’ll be the first to know. Now. Who wants a burger?”

After they’d eaten, Dean put Millie to bed, tucking her in and then getting out his guitar and singing _Fast Car_ to her, a ritual they followed every night. 

When he came out of his daughter’s room, Rufus had already gone home.

Missouri left next, telling Dean before she went that with a change in his alpha of record he should definitely expect a visit from the Omega Registration Board (better known as ORB) within the week and it really would be a good idea to try not to antagonise their officers. 

Dean made her no promises on that score.

Once Missiouri had gone, Sam and Jo vanished into Sam’s room to play X-box, and Bobby lay himself down on the sofa and pulled his trucker’s cap down over his face. Five minutes later he was snoring loudly. Ellen rolled her eyes fondly and she and Dean retreated to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. They sat together at the kitchen table and Dean stared at the tabletop until Ellen called him on it.

“You tryn’a drill a hole in the wood with the power of your mind?” she said dryly. “Spit it out, boy.”

Dean glanced up at her. “You and Bill always seemed pretty happy,” he said.

Ellen smiled softly. “We were. He was a good man. And a good alpha.”

“So he didn’t…,” Dean broke off, his cheeks flushed. “He wasn’t…”

“We were a team,” Ellen said with a smile. “He respected me. Valued my input. In some areas of our life I had the final say, in other areas he did. Was he a growly, possessive alpha? He could be,” her cheeks pinked slightly. “And he spanked my ass good a few times when I needed it. Don’t give me that look Dean Winchester; we’re wolves, not humans. We function better in hierarchies, we need discipline. It _was_ a _good_ relationship. And I miss him terribly, every day.”

Dean barely refrained from rolling his eyes. He’d heard that old _wolves need_ _discipline_ line far too many times to count. “And your brother? He’s your alpha guardian now, right?”

Ellen nodded. “Also a good man and a good alpha. He’s there for emotional support and paperwork. Doesn’t try to keep me under his thumb.”

Dean rubbed a hand across his neck. “Emotional support…do you mean, like, scenting and…you know.”

“Cuddling? Yeah. Like I said, we’re not human, Dean. And _weres_ —l _ycan_ if you prefer the more formal term—need a lot of touch. And for us—omegas—in particular, the scent of our packmates is soothing.”

Dean wrinkled his nose. “We’re not pack wolves though; we live in the mostly urban, mostly human world, not out on the ancient packlands.”

Ellen shrugged. “Pack. Family. Same thing.”

Dean sat silently for a moment. “You heard what Rufus was saying to Sammy earlier? About how ORB might assign me a Guardian alpha if they decide he’s too ‘weak’ to keep me in line? About how they might take Millie?”

Ellen pulled a face. “They won’t take Millie, Dean. You’re a good parent. As to assigning you a different guardian,” she paused. “It’s unlikely. Just keep your nose clean and try not to piss off any alphas.”

Dean did roll his eyes at that.

Ellen drained her coffee cup and settled back with a contented sigh. She bit at her lip for a moment and then said, “Have you thought about moving to California? You and Sam?”

Dean nodded. For years, before he’d had Millie, it had been all he’d thought about.

Sam was smart; there had been no doubt in Dean’s mind for a long time that his little brother was headed for college. In Dean’s idle fantasies, back when he was an unhappy teen, he and Sam packed up the second Sam hit eighteen, abandoned their papa and moved to Los Angeles. California had the most liberal omega laws in the country and Dean had itched to be out from under the yoke of the traditionalists in the mid-west and the southern states.

But. When he’d seriously looked into it, after Millie was born, he’d realized that California wasn’t all roses and sunshine for _weres_. The wolf population, for all the liberal laws, was very small. There was no state Heat leave policy, there were no _were_ birthing centers—omega male parents were required to be registered as _mothers_ on their children’s birth certificates, and there was a lot of covert discrimination when it came to housing and employment. Sure, an omega could live there without an alpha guardian, but in practice that just seemed to mean that _anyone_ could exploit them, quite easily apparently.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I don’t think it’s the place for us.”

“Where’s not the place for us?” Sam said coming into the kitchen in search of snacks.

“California.”

Sam tilted his head quizzically. “Are you thinking about moving?”

Dean shook his head and explained to Sam that Ellen had simply asked him if he’d ever considered moving there, but that he wasn’t keen on the idea. Sam became very quiet at that and Dean could sense that a deep and meaningful talk with his brother was in his near future.

Sure enough, later that night, once Ellen, Jo and Bobby had left, Sam approached him with a pile of envelopes.

“College acceptances?” Dean said, looking up from where he was going through the bills due to be paid that week and the various items of paperwork to do with their Papa’s death that needed attention.

Sam’s mouth opened in an O and Dean rolled his eyes. “I ain’t stupid. All I’ve been hearing since you started kindergarten is how you’re college material. Papa may have assumed you were gonna stick around here and work to support his drinking habit, but I never thought you would.”

Sam looked horror-stricken. “I wasn’t gonna leave you! I was gonna ask you and Millie to come with me.”

Dean smiled, genuine love tinged with sadness. “I know, Sammy. And you know I wouldn’t have come.”

“I know legally he was your alpha,” Sam interrupted, “but if we’d gone to California…”

Dean shook his head. “Nothing to do with legality. I just…couldn’t leave him. He might not’ve been much of a papa, but he was our papa, you know?”

“I don’t…” Sam sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. You’ll come now though? If I go away to college?”

Dean nodded “Yeah. Where you go, we go. And not just because you’re legally our alpha now.”

Sam sat down beside Dean and placed his pile of envelopes on the desk in front of him.

“They’ve been coming in since mid-February. Stanford’s on the top of the pile, because they’ve offered me a full scholarship.”

Dean whistled, low and impressed. “That’s awesome Sam. Is that where you wanna go?”

Sam shrugged. “Why don’t you want to live in California?”

Dean outlined his reasons and Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, I totally get that. So if you could live anywhere, where would you want to live?”

Dean snorted. “Anyplace is better than this, but, uh, I was thinking down south. Louisiana, maybe?”

Sam stared at him as if he’d suddenly grown two heads.

“You…want to go somewhere… _more_ traditional? _Why_?”

Dean sighed. “We’re _lycan_ , Sam. States where there aren’t many _weres_ don’t work well for omegas, for all the reasons I just told you. And in states like Kansas and Iowa…there might be a few more _weres_ , but the culture clash is…not good. Not for omegas. The alphas here have been too influenced by human culture; human thinking. _Lycan_ traditions; _lycan_ dynamics have been…perverted, I guess, is the best word. But places like Louisiana, Mississippi, they have a higher population of _lycans_ and they’ve got some of the biggest packs and packlands around. I’ve read a lot of stuff online. People… _lycan_ people…omegas, even, say that the _authentically_ traditional packs down south are different.”

Dean drew a deep breath. “I want to be somewhere that I’m _normal_ , Sam. Somewhere that understands what I need. Somewhere that doesn’t see me as a freak because I’m a male who can get pregnant and give birth. Somewhere that doesn’t see me as some kind of universal sex toy that belongs in a brothel if he isn’t _privately owned_.”

Sam was looking at Dean with big, wide eyes and a pensive, furrowed brow.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Because according to the mainstream media, traditional packs are a bunch of savage, backward yokels, running around in wolfskin half the time, naked the other half, and living off government benefits.”

Dean nodded. “Mainstream media is owned by the richest humans. Of course they’re gonna paint the packs in a bad light. If the packs became too powerful, the human systems that benefit wealthy humans would be in trouble.”

Sam made a thoughtful _hmming_ noise and began to rifle through the stack of envelopes. 

“So. Louisiana, huh? I also got into the University of New Orleans. They offered me a scholarship for tuition, but nothing for housing and food.”

Dean licked at his lips and ran a hand across the back of his neck.

“I, uh, may have an idea,” he said tentatively.

“Yes?” Sam prompted, drawing the word out, when Dean didn’t speak any further.

Dean ran a hand over his chin nervously. “So, I’ve been…kinda…looking at…business ideas. Things I could do while looking after Millie at the same time, and that you could help me with in between college classes. And well, how do you feel about us running a Bed and Breakfast together?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re a mechanic, Dean! What do you know about hospitality?”

Dean barked out a short laugh. “I don’t have any formal mechanic’s qualifications, Sam. You know Mike Guenther only let me do some part time work for him because of Papa. As for ‘hospitality’, I’ve been cooking, cleaning and taking care of people my whole life. I don’t see why I couldn’t run a B&B.”

Sam nodded. “Where would we get the money to buy one?”

Silently, Dean slid a piece of paper in front of his brother. Sam read it and his eyes widened.

“Papa had a life insurance policy?” he frowned. “And why was Mike paying for it?”

“Because Papa part-owned the business. He kept working in it for a few years after Mama died, but after that…he became more of a silent partner. Whenever he was sober enough, he went in, did a bit of work; but you know it never lasted. Mike kept up his insurance, though. I guess he figured we’d need it sooner, rather than later.”

Sam was still staring at him, eyes like saucers. He licked his lips. “So if Papa part-owned the garage,” he began.

Dean smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “ _You_ now part-own a garage. Congratulations.”

Sam chewed at his bottom lip. “You think Mike would like to buy us out?”

Dean shrugged. “Ask him and see,” he hesitated. “So…you want me to start looking for B&Bs in Louisiana?”

Sam sat silently for a long while and then took a deep breath. “If that’s what you’d like to do, then sure.”

\--

Dean woke up to the sound of the front door opening, with a crick in his neck and the imprint of his laptop’s keyboard on his cheek.

Fuck. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa while researching B&Bs in Louisiana.

He sat up, sleepy and disoriented as Sam and Millie came into the house, well-wrapped up and flushed with exertion.

“We wanted to let you sleep,” Sam said as they took off their jackets and shoes, “so I took her to the playground.”

“Thanks,” Dean rubbed at his eyes.

Milie ran up to Dean and climbed onto his lap.

“Omma!” Millie took hold of Dean’s chin and turned his head to face her. “Omma! We saw two _weres_ running in their wolfskins! In the playground! I could smell them. They were stinky. Uncle Sammy growled at them.”

Dean’s eyes flashed to his brother’s.

“I stayed in _human_ form,” Sam was quick to reassure him. “The wolves were alphas, but barely past puberty. They got a bit territorial, but they backed off quickly enough when they realized I was an older alpha.”

Dean scowled. “That’s why we’re supposed to stick to the designated wolfskin zones. That sort of thing scares the humans and that brings heat down on all of us.”

Sam shrugged. “Nobody there but us _weres_ ,” he looked at Dean, smirking at the keyboard impression on his cheek. “There’s fresh coffee in the pot. You look like you could do with a cup,” he held his hand out to Millie. “Come on, pumpkin. Let’s go and put your stuff away.”

“I need to go potty too,” Millie announced as she climbed off Dean’s lap.

Dean straightened himself and stood up with a yawn. Luna bless his little brother. He was truly the best uncle ever. He wandered into the kitchen and made himself a coffee, sipping at it contentedly as he leaned against the kitchen counter. Judging by the bowls in the sink Sam and Millie had Cheerios for breakfast, but Dean figured they’d be more than happy to eat a pancake or two if he made them. He was just checking that they had eggs in the fridge when a loud rap on the door made him jump.

Another sharp rap on the front door had him racing to open it and the scent of irritable alpha assaulted his nose the closer he got to it.

Running a quick hand through his hair, he took a shallow breath and opened the door with a pleasant smile fixed firmly in place.

There were two _weres_ standing on his doorstep, one alpha male; one beta female.

“Good morning. What can I do for you?”

The pair flashed badges at him. “ORB officers Pete Sheridan and Diana Ballard,” the alpha said.

He scented the air none-too-subtly. “Dean Winchester?”

“That’s me. What can I do for you?”

“Can we come in?”

Thank Luna he’d tidied everything up last night after everyone had gone.

“Sure,” Dean widened the door and stepped back. “Come on in. I’ll just go and get my alpha brother.”

He seated the officers in the living room, but didn’t have to go far to find Sam because he was already coming back from the bedrooms, holding Millie’s hand.

“ORB officers?” he murmured.

“Yep.”

Sam sighed and led the way back into the living room. “Hi,” he said, offering the alpha officer his hand. “I’m Sam Winchester.”

“Sam,” the alpha greeted, introducing himself as they shook, and then introducing his partner. “So,” he said as Sam took a seat opposite, with Dean beside him and Millie on her Omma’s lap. “We’d like to extend the department’s deepest sympathies for your loss.”

“Thank you,” both Winchesters spoke in unison. 

“However,” the alpha—Sheridan—said, frowning at Dean, before returning his attention to Sam, “Your alpha’s passing means we need to assess the safety of his registered omegas. One Dean Marius Winchester,” he read off a document that he’d taken out of his brief case, “mature omega male, 23 years of age; and one Millie Mary Winchester, juvenile omega female, 4 years of age. These are those omegas?” he gestured at Dean and Millie.

Sam nodded. Dean gritted his teeth.

“And they are your siblings, correct?”

If Dean clenched his jaw any harder he was going to crack a tooth.

“Dean is my brother,” Sam said coolly. “Millie is my niece.”

Officer Sheridan angled the file as if just now taking in the details that Dean knew were written there. 

“So Dean is an unmated omega whelp-parent?” he said, his words laced with censure.

Dean felt Millie tense on his lap and attempted to relax, knowing that she was picking up on his own stress.

“I am Millie’s omma, yes,” he told the ORB officer.

Sheridan turned and looked down his nose at Dean. “And does she have an alpha sire?”

Dean snorted. “You _do_ know how reproduction works, right?”

Beside him, Sam gasped quietly and Sheridan scowled and raised an imperious eyebrow.

“Of course, she has an alpha sire,” Dean tried not to let his irritation show.

Sheridan, on the other hand, had no such qualms. “And?” he demanded, testily.

Dean shrugged. “I went into heat unexpectedly at a Wolf Moon festival. It’s not like I was taking names.”

Sam whined, low and distressed.

“I see,” Officer Sheridan said.

Dean sincerely doubted that he did.

Sheridan turned back to Sam.

“According to the file, Dean is four years _older_ than you? Is that correct?”

Sam swallowed. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“And how do you feel about disciplining your older brother?”

Sam went rigid beside him. “Dean is a good brother,” he replied with a mostly steady voice. “And he’s an excellent parent. Sure, he was a spirited teenager, but my Papa was handling the discipline back then. The _man_ I know. The man beside me…he doesn’t need me to discipline him.”

Sheridan looked distinctly unimpressed. “And if that changes? If he decides that with your alpha gone he can do what he likes? How will you handle that?”

Sam’s face hardened and he straightened in his seat, suddenly looking much older than his eighteen years and looming, somehow larger. “Officer Sheridan,” he said. “I love my brother. I love my niece. They are my pack. And I will _always_ give them what they need, _whatever_ that may be.”

Dean scented the air subtly and damn…he had no idea Sammy could smell that dominant.

“Do you have any further questions for me? Because we’re mourning our alpha right now and we’ve got pack rituals to attend to.”

Sheridan met Sam’s eyes and then lowered his. “No further questions at this time,” he said. “But you should take note that we’ll be keeping a close eye on you,” his gaze shifted to Dean. “And your omegas.”

Sam showed the officers out and then Dean watched his brother’s shoulders sag, every trace of ‘alpha’ fleeing his body.

“Shi…,” he began, before changing mid-word when Dean looked pointedly at his daughter. “Sugar.”

Dean dropped a kiss on Millie’s head. “Thank you for being so good while ORB were here, sweetheart.”

Millie turned her face up to look at him. “They can’t take us if we’re good, can they?”

Dean gave her his most reassuring smile. “No, baby, they can’t. You wanna choose an activity from the basket?”

Millie’s face lit up and she jumped off Dean’s lap. “Can I do Play Dough?”

“Sure can,” he turned to Sam. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

Dean set his daughter up at the kitchen table with four pots of different colored play dough, a pink Tupperware container filled with tiny baking tools, and a tray. 

“You call me when you’ve got a whole tray filled with cookies, okay?”

Millie nodded earnestly. “I will Omma.”

Back in the living room, Dean studied his brother, who was sitting on the sofa biting at his thumbnail.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

Sam nodded. “I should be asking you that.”

Dean shrugged. “I’ve been dealing with alpha crap for years. No offense.”

Sam ran a hand across his mouth. “You know I didn’t mean…I mean, I’m not interested in…when I said. About giving you what you need.”

Dean smirked at his little brother’s obvious discomfort.

“What?” he teased. “You mean you’re not planning to put me over your knee and spank me if I’m a bad boy?”

Sam grimaced; then shuddered. “No!” he said. “That’s just…wrong.”

Dean held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, man. No arguments here,” he paused. “You did good, Sammy. Really unleashed those dominant alpha pheromones on those douchebags.”

Sam covered his face with his hands. “They just made me so angry. And the way they brought up,” his eyes slid to Millie who was rolling out bright blue play dough with her tiny rolling pin, and he nodded in her direction. “The whole thing’s in your case file. They didn’t have to play dumb just so they could try to rub it in your face,” he glowered. “Assholes.”

“Hey,” Dean put his hand on Sam’s arm. “We’re okay.”

Sam smiled tentatively.

“So,” Dean met Sam’s eyes, his expression serious. “Pack rituals, huh?”

Sam’s lips twisted. “It seemed like something he would respect. You know I don’t wanna do, you know, the whole thing. I’m happy to do the first part; the howling. But the rest?”

Sam shook his head, his eyes large and imploring.

Dean sat down beside his brother, thigh against thigh, and Sam leaned into him like the pup he was not too long ago.

“The way I see it,” Dean said slowly, “for the most part we’re just gonna be two brothers howling their loss at the moon. The rest…the part where you, as the family’s alpha, accept my submission? It’ll probably just come naturally when we’re in wolfskin. Now that Papa’s soul’s gone to Luna…our wolves will need to establish the new hierarchy. I figure I’ll probably just offer you my throat, you’ll put your teeth on it, and it’ll be done. We don’t need to make a big deal out of it.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “I guess,” he sighed. “What time’s Missouri coming around to babysit?”

“About seven. In the meantime, you feel like pancakes?”

Sam nodded.

“And then,” Dean added. “I’ve found a B&B for us that I wanna show you.”

\--

Sam was quiet as they drove to Woodridge _Lycan_ Reserve. He sat staring silently out the window at the green fields that eventually turned into the densely wooded area that denoted the start of the wilderness area reserved for _weres_ to run and hunt in their wolfskins.

Dean parked the car in the designated area and then looked across at him.

“You ready?”

Sam nodded and opened his door, stepping out into the twilight. The full moon hung heavily in the purple sky and the sun was a ball of diffused orange on the horizon. Sam estimated that they had about five minutes until it set. He stripped out of his clothes methodically, conscious of Dean doing the same, and placed his clothes on the passenger seat.

It was Awakening Moon, one of the big ones, so there were another few dozen _weres_ getting naked and shifting all around them and Sam estimated that they were close to a hundred cars in the parking lot. He and Dean weren’t here to celebrate though, they were here to mourn.

He glanced up at the moon and sighed. Sam wasn’t going to lie, changing hurt, but it was worth it. Running in his wolfskin was one of Sam’s favorite things to do, and something he and Dean didn’t do nearly enough. Life was simple for a wolf and Sam appreciated the opportunity to let go of the complexities of human life, if only for a little while.

Sam let the change begin, pain rolling through him as his body collapsed inwards and reformed and his senses heightened. Sam couldn’t tell you whether or not wolves were colorblind, but werewolves, were not. In wolfskin, Sam’s distance vision, his night vision and his ability to detect movement were vastly improved. His ability to see color was no different whichever form he was in, but in wolfskin, he was a little nearsighted. His hearing and sense of smell were far, far better in wolfskin.

In human form, Sam and Dean were about the same height. In his wolfskin, however, Sam was already much bigger than Dean.

They didn’t look much alike, not in human form and not in wolfskin either.

Dean-wolf’s fur was stunning; long and soft, it was a beautiful warm brown color that blended to a golden orange on his sides. His eyes, as in human form, were a bright, vivid green.

Sam-wolf’s fur was longer and just as soft, but in contrast to Dean-wolf’s it was a fairly standard gray/brown color, and his eyes in wolfskin couldn’t make up their mind what color they were any better than they could in his human form.

Dean-wolf whined as Sam-wolf came around the car, lowering onto his front paws, ass up, tail down, as he wiggled toward Sam-wolf. Sam-wolf felt an overwhelming rush of love for the smaller omega-male wolf, who was his to cherish and protect. At least until Dean-wolf found a worthy mate, anyway.

Sam-wolf and Dean-wolf scented each other, sniffing at each other’s muzzles and tails, before Dean-wolf rolled over, belly up, and offered Sam-wolf his throat. Sam-wolf vaguely remembered being worried about this in his human form, but now it just seemed quite normal and natural. He nuzzled against Dean-wolf’s throat, nothing more than a graze of teeth and really more an excuse for a good scenting, and it truly was as simple as that. Dean-wolf recognized Sam-wolf as pack alpha and Sam-wolf accepted Dean-wolf’s submission. Then he urged his brother to his feet and took off at a run, heading for the forest.

Sam-wolf and Dean-wolf ran and ran, stopping occasionally to play-fight and frolic. Eventually, though, they came to a stop beside the lake and Sam-wolf sat on his haunches and looked up at the moon. Dean-wolf came and sat beside him and whined a little, before leaning into Sam-wolf, snout against neck, seeking comfort.

Sam-wolf was alpha of their tiny pack because John-wolf was dead.

Sam-wolf tipped his head back and howled, long, loud and mournful. Dean-wolf joined him in the sorrowful howls of grief and before long they were receiving answering howls from all around, acknowledging their grief and offering comfort.

\--

Sam had been quiet on the car ride home too. He’d been conscious of his brother’s worried looks, but he hadn’t been able to—and still couldn’t—even _identify_ how he was feeling, never mind articulate it, so he’d simply met Dean’s query with _, I’m fine_ , which was usually his brother’s line. It wasn’t usually _Sam_ who didn’t want to talk about his feelings. In his case though, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to; he didn’t know _how_ to. Then again, for all he knew, that was Dean’s problem too.

Sam rolled over and punched his pillow, trying to make it fluffier and more comfortable.

He picked up his cell phone, checked the time—a little after 2.00am—and sighed before rolling onto his back again.

He wasn’t even quite _nineteen_ yet, for fuck’s sake. And sure he might be smart. And he might’ve had to grow up a lot more quickly than most of his friends thanks to his dysfunctional family, but still. Eighteen. He was in no way, shape or form ready for the responsibilities of being the family alpha. But he didn’t have a choice. If ORB thought he couldn’t do it, they’d take Dean and they’d take Millie and Sam would never, ever forgive himself.

A hesitant knock sounded on his door and a moment later it creaked open revealing his brother.

Dean dithered for a moment and then gave a put upon sigh.

“For fuck’s sake, Sammy,” he said quietly. “You’re stinkin’ up the place with your worry.”

Dean strode into the room wearing the boxers and tee-shirt he usually slept in and pulled back Sam’s blankets.

“Scoot over,” he said, slipping into Sam’s queen-sized bed beside him.

A moment later, Sam had an armful of cuddly omega, with Dean uncharacteristically wrapped around him like an octopus, his nose pressed against Sam’s neck.

Sam felt better immediately, just knowing that his omega brother trusted him enough to show his own vulnerability, and besides, Dean was pumping out some incredibly soothing pheromones.

“Neat trick,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Dean said smugly. “Alphas and omegas need each other, you know. It ain’t all ‘needy omegas’, can’t survive without an alpha, like some alphas want everyone to believe. It’s a two-way street.”

“Preaching to the choir, man,” Sam said.

Dean didn’t reply, just snuggled a little closer to Sam. “When you talked to Mike on the phone,” he said eventually, “are you sure he seemed like he might be interested in buying us out?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty hard to tell with Mike; he’s, like, the definition of taciturn. But it seemed like maybe the idea appealed to him. Guess we’ll find out when he comes over tomorrow,” Sam paused. “Are you sure about this B&B? The one in Jean-Lafitte?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded against Sam’s shoulder. “The house itself ain’t huge—six bedrooms, three bathrooms, but it’s got an office out the front and a separate cottage out the back—and it looks like it might need a bit of work, but it’s well within our price range.”

It was the ‘might need a bit of work’ that had Sam worried. Typically, real estate photos went out of their way to show places in their best light; if even _their_ photos made the B&B look like a place that needed work, what was it really like?

Still, he was reluctant to harsh Dean’s buzz. His brother seemed really excited about this.

“And,” Dean continued, “the town itself looks awesome! It’s only half an hour from New Orleans, but it’s a totally different world—a real, old-school fishing village. And it’s named after a pirate!”

Sam couldn’t help but find his brother’s enthusiasm contagious.

“Big _lycan_ community too,” Sam added.

“Yeah. Lot of members of the NOLA pack live there and it borders the NOLA Packlands right where their Pack Alpha lives.”

Sam’s eyes flew open. “Really? You didn’t mention that! Who’s the Pack Alpha? Do they have a problem with unaffiliated alphas moving into the closest town to the Packlands?”

Dean sighed. “Chill out, Sammy. The Pack Alpha is some guy called Lafitte. I forget his first name. And the pack website didn’t say much about him, mostly history stuff, but they come across like a pretty laid back, friendly pack. I don’t think we need to worry. Besides, what’ve we got to lose?”

“Apart from our freedom and our lives?” Sam said sarcastically. “Not a lot, I guess.”

Dean snorted. “I’d be worried about the Pack Alpha going after your balls, but I don’t think you’ve got any.”

Sam decided not to dignify that comment with a response. Not a verbal one anyway, he simply elbowed his brother in the ribs.

“Ow! Bitch!”

“Don’t be a jerk then.”

Dean was silent for a moment. “Seriously though, Sammy, I don’t think you need to worry. I’ve got a good feeling about this. Like…it’s meant to be.”


	2. I got a plan

_You got a fast car_   
_I got a plan to get us out of here_   
_I been working at the convenience store_   
_Managed to save just a little bit of money_   
_Won't have to drive too far_   
_Just 'cross the border and into the city_   
_You and I can both get jobs_   
_And finally see what it means to be living_

\--

John’s insurance payout came six weeks after his death, and it was enough for them to put down a deposit on Betsy’s B&B in Jean-Lafitte, Louisiana. The property had still been on the market, was still cheap, and the owner had been prepared to wait for settlement until the finance from the probate of John’s will came through. That took two months, but once it was all settled, they’d finalized the purchase of the B&B, sold their own house, with a thirty day settlement, and Mike had bought out John’s former share of the business.

Mike had offered them a reasonable price for it when Sam had met with him just after John’s funeral, and when the sale finally went through he’d gruffly wished them all the best for their future, with a handshake for Sam and a hug for Dean.

Still, Sam couldn’t help feeling that it was all too good to be true. Betsy’s B&B had been on the market for a while, it was cheap, and the owners were willing to wait on Sam and Dean, which had really escalated Sam’s anxiety about what condition it might be in. The realtor reassured them that it was going cheap because it was an estate sale—Betsy Montague had been elderly, with no children, and when she died her property had been inherited by a niece who lived in New York City and wanted everything liquidated as quickly as possible. But a B&B in Jean-Lafitte was a niche market, which made it harder to move than your average property and until Sam and Dean’s offer no-one had been interested. The niece, the realtor had explained, was just happy to see it finally go—and to someone who wanted to run it, not bulldoze it, too.

Sam suspected there was more to it than that; there was something about the realtor’s smooth smarminess that he just didn’t trust; but Dean seemed so giddily happy about the whole thing that Sam didn’t want to put a damper on it. Time would tell.

By the beginning of July, they were ready to go. Sam had turned nineteen, he’d finished his senior year and he’d accepted a place at UNO; ORB had been notified that they were moving to Louisiana; and everything they owned was either sold or packed into the Impala or the U-haul they’d hired for the cross-country trip. 

The plan was that Dean would lead the way to Louisiana in the Impala, with Millie securely strapped into her car seat, and Sam would follow in the U-Haul. 

If Dean had been giddy about buying the B&B, Sam was equally as excited about driving the truck. Dean almost never let him drive the Impala, and Sam really wasn’t the hyper-alpha type, but the opportunity to drive a decent sized truck definitely brought out his more knot-headed tendencies. 

Because Dean was a huge fan of _Smokey and The Bandit_ , he’d organized for them both to have CB radios in their respective vehicles, and Sam had to admit that even though he’d thought it was lame at first, it was also kind of fun to chat with Dean and Millie—and various truckers—over the CB.

The first night they’d stopped at a cheap motel just south of Memphis and Dean had mourned the fact that they wouldn’t have time to visit Graceland, but they were on a schedule. They’d done nothing more at The Hound Dog Motel than eat and sleep and they’d been on the road again by 7.00am the next morning, because Dean wanted to arrive early enough in the afternoon that they could unpack and get settled before Millie’s bedtime.

“Omma,” Millie said from the backseat, “I need to go potty!”

Dean met her eyes in the rear view mirror. According to google maps, there was a truck stop about two and a half miles down the interstate, but Millie was a typical four-year-old and often didn’t mention that she needed to go until she really, _really_ needed to go.

“Can you hold on until we get to the next roadhouse or do you want to go by the side of the road?”

Millie pulled a face. “Can I go wolfskin?”

Dean chewed at his bottom lip. On the one hand, it would be easier to toilet Millie in her wolfskin. On the other hand, technically, _weres_ weren’t supposed to shift outside of private property or a designated reserve. And as a single omega-male parent, Dean was particularly under the microscope as far as his parenting of his daughter was concerned.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said regretfully, “we’re not in a designated _were_ reserve, we could get in trouble. There’s a truck stop coming up real soon…in about…two and half minutes. Can you hold on that long? ”

Dean stuck to the speed limits most of the time these days, but he was an absolute stickler about it when he had his daughter in the car.

Millie bit at her lip and then nodded.

Dean called Sammy up on the CB and let him know they were taking a potty break.

Three and a half minutes later, he was hustling Millie into Cooper’s Truck Stop with Sam hurrying behind him.

“I’ll get us a table,” Sam said. “We’ve already stopped, so we may as well eat.”

Dean nodded his agreement and headed for the restrooms. If he’d been by himself, Dean would’ve just headed for the Male Restroom, which could be used by human men or by beta-male and omega-male _weres_ , but his daughter was with him, so he headed for the Omega Restroom instead. The Alpha Restroom was in a separate building out the back, because even in human form, alpha werewolves struggled not to get territorial in communal restrooms; even with decent air freshener, the scents could trigger their baser instincts and nobody, Dean thought wryly as he ushered Millie into a cubicle, needs to see an _actual_ pissing contest.

Coming out of the Omega Restroom, hand-in-hand with his daughter, Dean got a couple of confused stares from humans coming and going from the Male Restroom. One man in particular, was looking at Dean with barely concealed revulsion.

Omega-males weren’t common. _Lycans_ made up about 20% of the United States population and omega-males made up the less than 5% of the _lycan_ population, so it wasn’t impossible for a human to go their whole life without crossing paths with an omega-male _were_. And even if they did meet one, they wouldn’t always realize that they had. Hollywood—and porn—had a tendency to portray omega-males as dainty fey creatures who sat around in satin and lace just waiting for some big strong alpha to come along and fuck them. Dean, in his work-worn denim jeans, plaid shirt, sturdy boots and premature five o’clock shadow, really didn’t look the part.

Beside him, Millie sniffed none-too subtly. “Omma,” she said, “why is that man looking at us like that?”

The man, perhaps embarrassed at being called out by a four-year-old, elected to double down on his doucheiness. He sneered at Dean and called him a disgusting effing freak, before storming through the double doors that led out into the food service area.

“Well,” Millie’s free hand went to her hip. “What a meanie!”

Dean couldn’t supress his grin at her tone of outrage. “Humans don’t always understand _lycans,_ ” he explained, “so sometimes they get scared and say mean things.”

Millie nodded. “He’s probably sad too, cuz he doesn’t have a wolf inside him.”

Dean leaned down and scooped his daughter into his arms, pressing his nose against her neck and scenting her and letting her do the same to him. It was comforting and reassuring to them both.

He then strode out into the food services area, past the man who’d sneered at him, and let his nose lead him straight to Sammy, who’d got them a table and ordered them food.

“Everything okay?” Sam murmured, picking up on the tension immediately.

“Yeah,” Dean set Millie down in front of her chicken nuggets and fries and then slid in beside her, in front of his own bacon cheeseburger. “Just a bigoted human. Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“He called Omma a freak,” Millie said matter-of-factly.

A low growl rumbled up Sam’s throat and his eyes widened, then tinged red briefly, before narrowing dangerously.

“Not the first time it’s happened, won’t be the last time either,” Dean said. “Just…eat your salad. I tell you, Sammy, if anyone’s a freak it’s you. What kind of a werewolf prefers salads over meat?”

Sam, predictably, went on a rant about cholesterol, clogged arteries and heart attacks and Dean was pleased to note that the heart rates and fear-scent of the humans at the next table reduced considerably. Tennessee had one of the larger wolf populations, but this was a truck stop and it was the summer holidays; there were travelling families from all over, some of whom had never seen a _were_ outside of television before. And on television, alpha-male _weres_ , more often than not, were the bad guy. 

Sammy, with his floppy hair and puppy dog eyes, earnestly extoling the virtues of salad, was not your stereotypical knot-headed alpha.

They got back on the road again quickly and hit the outskirts of New Orleans a little after two pm. Sam had studied the map before they’d left and knew they wouldn’t pass close enough by UNO for him to get a look at it, but he craned his neck in its direction anyway as they rumbled along the I-10.

Half an hour later they arrived at Crown Point, the small incorporated community ten minutes up the road from Jean-Lafitte, and the location of their realtor, King’s Crown Real Estate.

The agency was not so much a commercial premises as a private house with an office attached. It had a horse-shoe driveway and plenty of yard, so they were able to park both the car and the truck without any trouble.

Dean glanced at his daughter in the rear-view mirror. Millie was asleep and he knew without a doubt that she’d be grumpy when he woke her up. He _could_ leave her sleeping and get Sammy to go in and sign for the key, but goddamn it, this was _his_ project. He didn’t want to give the impression—especially in a new community—that everything ‘official’ had to be done by his alpha brother. Alternatively, he could leave Sammy with Millie and go in by himself. Which should be fine. But he didn’t know who he was dealing with. Was this firm a _were_ business or were they human? If they were human, no problem. If they were beta or omega wolves, no problem. If an unmated omega wolf walked into an office with a bunch of unmated alpha wolves, there was the potential for a problem. And Dean didn’t need to start his fresh new life with trouble.

Dean got out of the car with a sigh and felt his tee-shirt become soaked with sweat almost immediately. The air smelled of damp vegetation, brackish water and _home_ , and Dean could almost feel the bayou sinking into his bones. He smiled quietly to himself and then opened the back door, leaning in toward his sleeping baby girl.

“Millie, baby, wake up. We have to pick up the key.”

Millie wriggled and grimaced. “Noooo, Omma, sleeping!”

“I know, sweetheart. We’ll be real quick, I promise.”

Sammy came up beside him and rested a hand on his hip. “I got this. Millie, Uncle Sammy will carry you, okay?”

Millie opened one eye. “Like a princess?”

Sam smiled. “Like a princess,” he promised.

Dean moved out of the way and watched with pride as his brother lifted his daughter out of her car seat. He, in turn, went and took their contract of sale out of the glove box and then straightened his shoulders and nodded at his brother.

“Ready?”

Sam nodded. And they walked into the real estate agent’s office with their heads high, Dean in the lead, contract clutched in his hand, and Sam trailing behind with Millie cradled in his arms.

The office was small, cluttered and unoccupied, but the jangling door chimes quickly brought a red-headed woman from out the back. Dean scented the air surreptitiously. Alpha.

Well. That was unusual. Alpha females were even rarer than omega males.

She eyed the trio speculatively. “The Winchesters?” she said, in a deep Scottish brogue.

“That’s us,” Dean agreed. “Sam and Dean. And Millie.”

The woman smiled. “Rowena McLeod. My son Fergus handled your purchase. Just a moment.”

She picked up the desk phone and hit a button, telling the person who answered that the Winchesters had arrived.

A moment later a short, dark-haired dapper man appeared and introduced himself as Fergus Crowley-McLeod. Dean didn’t miss the way his Baba winced at the name. Interesting.

“Sam is it?” Crowley-McLeod reached out for Dean’s hand.

“Dean,” he replied as he gripped the offered hand.

Crowley-McLeod stiffened and then scented and then drew Dean a little closer.

“Charmed,” he said, suddenly smarmy.

Dean snatched his hand back with a sniff that confirmed it: alpha.

Crowley-McLeod’s gaze travelled up to Sam. He raised an eyebrow.

“So this must be Sam,” he said.

“That’s right,” Sam juggled Millie and held out a hand.

Crowley-McLeod stared at it, looked briefly at Millie and then, finally, met Sam’s eyes. “The _alpha_?”

“That’s right,” Sam confirmed.

Crowley-McLeod shook his hand quickly, with a brief quirk of lips, and turned back to Dean.

“But not _your_ alpha, right?”

“We’re brothers,” Dean said. “Not that _that’s_ got anything to do with why we’re here.”

He waggled the contract in his hands. “Can we get the keys to our new property please, Mr Crowley-McLeod? And sign whatever documents we still need to sign? You mentioned something in your last email about licensing paperwork?”

The realtor pulled a face. “Just call me Crowley,” he said.

Rowena McLeod gave a put upon sigh and Crowley ignored her studiously.

“And yes, let’s get to it,” he escorted the Winchesters to a nearby table and began going through the sales contract, taking copies of their drivers’ licenses, getting them to sign for the receipt of the keys to the main house, cottage and office, and then passing them the licensing paperwork.

Dean flicked through it quickly, but Sam read it thoroughly with a small furrow between his eyes; a furrow that seemed to be deepening as he read.

“Problem?” Crowley said lightly.

“This is a license to run a Bait and Barbecue out of the premises,” Sam said.

“Yes?” Crowley’s tone was politely puzzled.

“I thought it was a B&B?” Dean said with a frown.

“It is,” Crowley replied.

“As in Bed and Breakfast?”

“As in Bait and Barbecue.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “So we haven’t bought a Bed and Breakfast?”

Crowley shook his head. “No you haven’t.”

“We thought we were buying a Bed and Breakfast.”

Crowley frowned. “Well it’s too late to back out now. This is a done deal.”

There was a moment of deafening silence and Dean could practically see Sam struggling not to say _I told you so_. Not that he _did_ tell him so; not in so many words anyway. He just thought it all seemed too good to be true. And apparently, he’d been right.

“What in Hades is a Bait and Barbecue?” Dean finally demanded.

A Bait and Barbecue, it turned out, was a restaurant that specialized in grilling and pit barbecuing, with a bait shop attached to it. The one the Winchesters had just bought only had enough room for half a dozen small tables and catered predominantly to the takeout crowd.

“Betsy used to run it with her mate until he passed and then it all got too much for her,” Crowley told them. “The local _were_ pack was subletting it on a month-by-month basis and running it as a going concern, right until the sale went through. I was actually starting to think I was going to need to sweet-talk them into buying it outright, but the Pack Alpha was keen to attract some new blood to the area.”

Dean brightened. “Do you think they’d like to keep renting it?”

“Maybe,” Crowley said. “Anyway, you have the keys; you have the address; you have the licensing paperwork. It’s all yours. Good luck.”

Dean knew a dismissal when he heard one. He stood and shook the realtor’s hand, noting with displeasure that Crowley held his hand for just a moment too long, and then the Winchesters were back out into the sunshine and humidity. 

“So,” Sam said and Dean steeled himself for a lecture. “Crowley said ‘the local _were_ pack’. He didn’t say ‘my pack’.”

Dean frowned. “Yeah. Well. We already knew the NOLA pack accepted unaffiliated _weres_. I mean, _we_ were able to move here. In fact, seems like they were keen for us—or, you know, out-of-town _weres_ —to move here.”

Dean opened the car door and Sam put Millie into her car seat. “I know,” he said, as he fixed the straps. “But it’s one thing to hear it and another to see an unaffiliated alpha running a successful business so close to the NOLA Packlands.”

Dean nodded. He could hear what Sam was saying, but at the moment he had more pressing concerns; namely the fact that he had apparently saddled them with a restaurant and bait shop instead of the cosy little Bed & Breakfast he’d been anticipating.

“C’mon,” he said to Sam, “Let’s go take a look at this lemon I’ve bought.”

Sam worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Maybe it won’t be too bad,” he said. “Maybe the ‘too good to be true’ part was just…it being a Bait and Barbecue. Maybe everything’s going turn out fine.”

\--

 _Fine_ , was not exactly the word that Dean would use, he thought, as he turned in a slow circle, surveying the disaster around him. In fact, _fine_ was probably several states away from the mess he’d landed them in.

From the outside, the house hadn’t looked too bad. Sure, it needed a good lick of paint, maybe few of the clapboards replaced, but nothing that Dean couldn’t handle himself.

Inside. Dean took a deep shuddering breath. The inside was a nightmare. It appeared that Betsy only used the living room at the front of the house and the bedroom and ensuite bathroom just off of it. Those rooms were in good condition.

The rest of the house? Not so much. Dry rot. Rising damp. Peeling wallpaper. Cracks in the plaster. Rusted pipes. The oven looked like it would fall to pieces if he tried to clean it. The upstairs _might_ be alright; honestly, none of them had even been game to try the stairs; there were several missing and the balustrade was broken.

At least the power had been connected. They’d organized for Crowley to do that on their behalf before they left Kansas and he’d come through for them, thank Luna.

Dean could feel a pulsing, throbbing pain starting up behind his eyes and he ran a shaky hand over his forehead and then glanced at Sam.

Sam looked horrified. He looked like he was trying hard not to cry. Millie actually was crying, quietly, from where she stood holding her Uncle Sammy’s hand.

Her bottom lip wibbled when Dean met her eyes.

“Omma,” she said. “I don’t like this house. I wanna go home.”

Dean took a deep breath. Okay. He could do this.

It wasn’t that different to the time Papa went off on a month long bender and the electricity got shut off—in the middle of _winter_. Dean had been eleven at the time and he’d made a pillow-and-blanket fort for him and Sam in the living area to keep them warm. He’d had to make macaroni-cheese with fluff marshmallow mix on the gas stove top for a couple days too, because that’s all they had left in the cupboard and Sammy needed to eat. Sammy had been scared and upset, so Dean had made a game of it. Made it fun. And that’s what he’d do now.

He squatted down in front of Millie and gave her his most brilliant smile.

“This is gonna be so much fun,” he said. “It’ll be just like camping! It’ll only be for a few days, though, because we’re gonna renovate. You know what that means?”

Millie shook her head.

“It means we’re gonna fix everything up real nice and we’re gonna make you the prettiest princess room _ever_. You get to choose everything! How does that sound?”

Millie looked sceptical, but intrigued. “Can I have pink walls?”

“You sure can baby.”

Dean settled Millie into the back seat of the Impala, because the bayou was right opposite and he didn’t want her to wander off while he and Sam were busy hauling boxes and get eaten by an alligator or drown. Once she was settled with a movie on Dean’s laptop, he and Sam set about unpacking the U-Haul and cleaning up the dining area and kitchen. They hauled the heavy refrigerator inside and Dean thanked Luna for alpha _were_ strength. They set up the living room and put all of Millie’s boxes in Betsy’s old bedroom, before bringing Millie inside.

“This is just your bedroom for now,” Dean told her. “Just until we get the renovations done.”

“Where’s your bed, Omma?” Millie asked, looking around her room.

Dean explained that they were all going to have their own bedrooms in this house, but that for now, while they were still fixing it up, he and Uncle Sammy would be sleeping on mattresses in the living room.

Millie shook her head and pouted. “I want you to sleep in my room, Omma, like always.”

Dean squatted down in front of his daughter and met her eyes. “Just until we finish the renovations. Then we both get our own rooms. Deal?”

Millie just kept pouting and giving him the puppy dog eyes and Dean figured this was something he was going to have to work on. He had shared a room with his daughter out of necessity ever since she was born, but she was four now—nearly five—and Dean would really like his nocturnal privacy back. For a start, he’d been on suppressants ever since he stopped feeding her himself and switched to bottles—which meant he’d gone eighteen months longer than the maximum recommended time without a heat.

Dean loathed going into heat, but he didn’t want to get sick, not now that he had a daughter to care for.

Sam came back in with an armful of boxes just as Dean was dragging his mattress into Millie’s room. He grinned.

“Knew she wouldn’t wanna be by herself.”

Dean just rolled his eyes.

“So get this,” Sam said. “After I set up the kitchen table, I went and checked out the building at the front, the one we originally thought was an office? That’s the B&B and it’s got a great kitchen. All top notch professional quality stuff. I’m guessing the kitchen in the house is shit because Betsy got all her food from the restaurant.”

Dean nodded. It made sense that an old lady wouldn’t want to cook for herself and if the local pack was running the restaurant, they would’ve seen it as their duty to feed her.

“And the cottage out back?” Sam added. “I think it’s a Heat Hut.”

Dean’s face closed over.

“No, no,” Sam hastened to add. “It looks nice. Much better condition than the main house. Solid brick, triple glazed with built-in air purifiers. Heavy duty locks. Nice bedroom, living/kitchenette area, nice bathroom. It’s cosy.”

“Cosy,” Dean echoed.

Sam nodded earnestly. “It’s…more like a traditional Packlands Heat Hut than, you know, the ones that came later.”

Long ago, before _lycans_ emerged from the chronicles of myth and merged with the human population, traditional packs had Heat Huts, sacred places for omegas who were not mated, and not looking to mate, to seek solitude and safety during their bi-annual heats. Typically the Heat Hut was guarded by several of the pack’s biggest, strongest beta wolves, who wouldn’t be tempted by the pheromones of the omegas in heat. The omegas themselves would help each other through their period of oestrus, and nowadays, Dean imagined that omegas from the traditional packs had some damn fine quality vibrating dildos with knots to really do the job properly. 

After the merge, when lycans and humans began to live side-by-side in villages, towns and cities, things began to change for omegas and not for the better. Their heats were seen by the humans as something primitive and animalistic. Something messy and disgusting. They began to lock omegas away during their heats, not in luxury, not to protect them during their sacred time, not out of any concern for them. No, they were locked away so that they wouldn’t distract the big strong alphas from their work; so that they wouldn’t upset the naturally more prudish humans with their sluttiness. Heat Huts were little more than brick sheds with steel reinforced doors. Omegas were padlocked inside, often with no sanitation or plumbing and very little food and water. They sweated out their heats on bare floors covered in straw, and came out five days later dehydrated, dirty and ill, thus cementing the consensus in the wider world that an unmated omega in heat was some kind of savage, feral beast.

Things were better for omegas these days. A lot of houses had proper built-in Heat Rooms and most towns and cities had fairly decent Heat Shelters for those who didn’t have anywhere safe to go through their heat, but in all honesty, those weren’t entirely safe. Anywhere that the general public gathered in large numbers…such as shopping malls and sporting stadiums…generally had Heat Rooms for their customers too. As with most things in life, the wealthier you were, the more access you had to decent Heat Amenities.

Dean figured it made sense that this close to one of the last remaining traditional Packlands in the USA, the Heat Huts were going to be like the older, more traditional ones.

“So if you wanted to,” Sam began and then trailed off at Dean’s sardonically raised eyebrow.

Somewhere between John Winchester’s funeral and now, though, Sam’s inner-alpha had started to assert itself, and it was disconcerting, to say the least, to find that his little brother was not as easy to derail as he used to be.

“If you _wanted_ to go off the suppressants,” Sam continued doggedly, “you _could_. Safely. That’s all I’m saying.”

They were saved from further conversation on the subject by a knock at the front door. Dean cocked his head and then met Sam’s eyes.

“Someone’s at the door, Omma,” Millie said.

By unspoken agreement, Dean went to answer it, because he may have been the _omega_ brother, but he was also the _older_ brother.

There were two women on the doorstep, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Dean scented subtly and tried not to let his mouth drop open at what he was smelling.

This was a mated pair; they smelled too closely of each other to be anything else, but one was human and one was _lycan_ —a beta, if his nose didn’t deceive him. He just wasn’t sure which was which with them standing so close together.

“Sam Winchester?” said the one with the short cropped hair.

“Dean,” he corrected.

The woman blinked and then smiled. “Dean. I’m Jody Mills, Pack Deputy of the NOLA pack,” which made her the beta wolf, “and this is my wife, Donna, _Lycan_ Liaison Officer for the Louisiana Department of Social Services. Welcome to Jean-Lafitte.”

She held out a hand and Dean took it, shaking firmly, meeting her eyes and giving her his best charming smile. “So is this an official visit?”

Donna made a so/so gesture with her hand. “It’s part southern hospitality,” she handed him a couple of shopping bags. “We figured you might not have had time to stock up yet, so that there’s a welcome to the neighborhood starter pack of groceries—and it’s part checking on the welfare of you and your daughter, in an unofficial-official kind of way. Can we come in?”

“Sure,” Dean allowed them into the house and then led them through into the front living room. “Sam?”

Sam came out of Millie’s bedroom where he’d been unpacking her clothes and putting them away.

“This is my brother Sam,” he said, and let Jody and Donna complete their own introductions while he put the groceries—bread, milk, bacon, eggs, bananas, orange juice, coffee, sugar and a bag of choc chip cookies—either in the fridge or on the kitchen counter.

When he returned to the living area everyone was seated.

“Thanks for the groceries,” Dean said, “although I’ve gotta be honest, the house has less of a working kitchen than we realized when we bought it.”

“In fact,” Sam added. “There’s a lot about this place that we didn’t realize when we bought it, but we think we can make it work. Not that we know anything about running a Bait and Barbecue.

Jody and Donna exchanged a significant look.

“The Pack can help you,” Jody said.

Dean perked up. “Yeah, Crowley said something about you guys leasing the restaurant before we bought it. You wanna keep doing it?”

“You’ll need to talk to Benny,” Jody said. “He’s the one who was running it. He’s one hell of a short order cook. And he’s pretty good at carpentry and dry-walling too.”

Dean gave her his number and asked her to get Benny to call him if he was interested in leasing the B&B again. Jody said she would.

Donna, meanwhile, told them that Louisiana didn’t have an Omega Registration Board and explained that Omega Welfare was the responsibility of the NOLA Pack, with DSS over-sight.

“When an omega moves here from interstate,” she said, “ORB in the state they’re leaving sends their file to our DSS. The file comes across my desk, and I liaise with the Pack, namely Jody here.”

Dean couldn’t quite help his inelegant snort. “ _Liaising_. Right.”

It earned him a bark of laughter from Jody and a giggle-snort from Donna, but it didn’t quite soothe his nerves. The women sitting opposite him might be nice as pie, but _they’d seen his file_.

“Do we get a case-worker?” Sam asked.

Donna scrunched her nose. “Not exactly. The Pack will probably send you a mentor, someone to make sure you’re both doing okay, and to see if you’re interested in officially joining. You don’t have to, there’s no pressure, but you’re welcome to, if you think that’s something that might work for you.”

There was a pause while both Sam and Dean processed that and then Jody asked if they had any questions.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “You get any grief from the Pack for mating a human?”

He got a spike of irritation from Jody and one of distress from Donna.

“You got a problem with it?” Jody demanded.

“Hades, no. Just wondering if anyone else did.”

Donna’s scent lost some of its fear-edge and Jody sighed.

“Not from the Pack, no. It really is as progressive as advertised. Some of the non-affiliated _weres_ took issue. Some humans too. But the Pack’s behind us all the way.”

And that? Was _good_ to hear.

They talked a little about Sam starting college and about Millie starting at the local elementary school after the summer vacation was over. Jody and Donna, they learned, had two adopted daughters, Claire and Alex. There was a story there, given the way their scents both dipped briefly with sadness at the mention of the girls, but Dean didn’t want to pry.

Jody told them about the Full Moon celebrations and wolfskin runs that the Pack held every month and Donna told them about the Chartered Fishing Company her father ran and about tourism in general. They talked about the weather and how good it was that even though Betsy’s house was run down, at least the front area had air conditioning. 

At some point, Dean got up and made everyone a coffee. He gave Millie a glass of milk and a cookie at the same time and let Jody and Donna fuss over her. She was a cute kid, if Dean did say so himself, and he was doing a damn fine job of raising her.

By the time the couple left, Dean knew they’d been unofficially-officially given the Pack and DSS seal of approval and he had the tentative feeling that they’d actually just made some friends too.

They had bacon and eggs for supper, cooked in the B&B. The kitchen, with its sleek stainless steel counters and top of the range appliances, practically had Dean drooling. He loved to cook and this place made him feel like a professional.

By the time he got Millie tucked into bed, she was droopy-eyed with exhaustion, but she still wanted Omma to tuck her in with a song like always. Dean went and found his guitar.

“The usual?”

Millie nodded.

Dean strummed his guitar. “ _You got a fast car_ ,” he crooned, “ _I want a ticket to anywhere…”_

When he got back to the living room, Sam was brooding.

“Hey,” Dean said. “We’re gonna be okay.”

Sam smiled. “I know,” he said. “Like the song says, we’ll finally see what it’s like to be living.”

\--

Cain’s Cajun Food was situated right on the Bayou Barataria with views across to Isle Bonne. Dean pushed open the door and stepped into the restaurant’s air conditioned comfort a little before midday. The place was busy—only a couple of spare tables—and the aroma of frying onion, bell peppers and celery and the tangy scent of lightly spiced meat and fish made Dean’s mouth water.

He’d received a phone call earlier that morning from the guy who Jody had mentioned, Benny, the short-order cook who used to run Betsy’s B&B before Sam and Dean bought it.

Benny had sounded…nice. No; screw that…he’d sounded _sexy_. He had a Cajun accent, but spoke molasses slow, deep and gravelly, and there was something about his voice that tapped into Dean’s most primal instincts and made him want to flop belly up and offer his throat. Either that or get on his hands and knees and offer his ass, but Dean wasn’t going to look too closely at that. No, that instinct was better stuffed in a locked box and forgotten about. Besides, from the casual, off-hand way Jody had spoken about him, Dean figured that this Benny guy was a beta.

A server in black pants and a white shirt came over and sat Dean at a table. She brought him a glass of iced water and a menu.

“You here alone?” she asked.

Dean scented subtly. Human.

He produced a flirtatious smile. “I’m being joined by someone for a business meeting.”

She brought a second menu and then drifted away.

Dean sipped his water and studied the menu. When the door chime jangled he looked up. The man who’d just entered was shorter than Dean himself, but stockier, with a neatly trimmed reddish/brown beard and pale blue eyes. He carried himself with an air of power and authority which screamed _alpha_ , but he had a gentle smile, which Dean realized was being aimed directly at him at the same moment he realized he was staring.

He looked away. Ah shit. He really hadn’t expected Benny to be an alpha.

“Dean?”

The alpha was beside him. And _fuck_. He smelled as good as he looked. This was so unfair. This was supposed to be a business meeting. He wasn’t supposed to think this guy was _hot_ , Luna damn it!

Dean steeled himself and raised his head.

“That’s me. You Benny?”

“That I am. Mind if I sit?”

Dean swallowed. “Please do.”

The server came across with a glass of iced water for Benny.

“Alpha,” she said.

Benny smiled. “Hey Darlene,” he lifted the water glass. “Thank you, _Chere_.”

The server—Darlene—inclined her head.

Benny turned back to Dean. “Have you had a chance to look at the menu yet?”

“Uh. Yeah,” Dean nodded. “Not sure what I want though. It all sounds good. You got any recommendations?”

Benny tilted his head, thoughtful, considering. “It is all good,” he agreed. “Can’t really go wrong. I’m going to have the gumbo. And an iced tea.”

Darlene dutifully noted his choice on her order pad.

Dean hesitated and then closed the menu and smiled at Darlene. “I’ll have an iced tea too. And the softshell crab sandwich, please.”

“Good choice,” Benny said, and the approving tone warmed Dean all the way to his soul.

Dean took a surreptitious deep breath and reminded himself that this _was not_ a date.

He took a sip of his water to steady himself and then ruined the image of composure he was trying to build by tugging on his shirt collar. Sheesh. Was it getting hot in here or was it just him?

Benny was looking at him steadily and Dean wasn’t sure what to read into it. Had Benny been expecting him to be an alpha? Was he annoyed at having to deal with an omega?

Dean bit at his lip and Benny tracked the movement, pupils becoming tinged with red. Shit. Was Benny attracted to him? Or did he just think that any omega was fair game for his knot?

Benny closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them, they were back to normal.

“So,” Benny said. “I hear that Betsy’s old place is in worse shape than you realized.”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, clutching the conversation topic like a lifeline, and promptly launching into the whole saga, not only of the house being way more run down than they’d expected, but of their misunderstanding of the term ‘ _B &B’_ and their general lack of experience in running either a bait shop or a barbecue restaurant. He also mentioned that he was still sort of thinking about maybe opening up a Bed and Breakfast in the house, once he’d gotten it fixed up properly, because he needed something to do if he wasn’t going to fix cars and he needed to be able to do it around his daughter’s schedule, because it wasn’t like they had family here to help care for her.

Their meals came while Dean was talking and he continued to pour his heart out, in between bites of sandwich and fries.

“So,” he finished, “if you want to lease the B&B from us, like you leased it from Betsy, that’d actually be great.”

Benny had remained silent throughout Dean’s embarrassing case of verbal diarrhoea and it took him a moment to respond when Dean finally fell silent.

“Okay,” Benny said, slowly. “How about this. We lease the restaurant from you, same terms as the lease we had with Betsy,” he took a lease document out of his pocket and handed it to Dean. “Take a look at that. Get advice. See if you think it’s fair.”

Dean nodded.

“However,” Benny continued. “I would also like for you to work with us in the B&B, learn the business, and I won’t pay you for that. Instead, once we finish up we’ll come and help you with your renovations. Now, that’s long hours. 5.30am to 2.00pm in the restaurant and then 2.00pm until 6.00pm working on the house. But if we keep that up…maybe until your brother starts college in September, the house should be in good shape. And then we’ll take it from there. Maybe you keep working for us, for a wage, maybe you look at opening a Bed and Breakfast. Maybe something else. How does that sound?”

Dean’s mouth was hanging open. “Amazing,” he said. “What’s the catch?”

Benny shrugged. “No catch. You might not be Pack, but you’re still wolves. I see this as a really good opportunity for us to get to know you and you to get to know us. You, your brother, your daughter; you’re a tiny unaffiliated pack. We’ll never pressure you to join us, but we’ll look out for you, regardless. I believe Jody mentioned that we assign unaffiliated wolves who move here a mentor?”

Dean nodded.

“Well that’s me. I’m your mentor. If you need us; if you need _me_ ; I’ll be here for you.”

Dean sniffed surreptitiously, but he could only smell good things coming off Benny.

“Thanks,” he said finally. “That’s…good to know. And thanks for, you know, offering to show me the ropes at the restaurant. And for volunteering to help with the house. That’s. Yeah,” he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ll talk it over with Sam and call you with an answer by tomorrow, at the latest.”

Benny nodded. “So, Dean, tell me about your little girl. Millie, I think you said?”

“Yeah,” Dean smiled broadly. “She’s named after my alpha-sire’s Mama and she’s nearly five years old.”

Dean could talk about Millie for a long time. He could talk about Sam for a long time too, and it wasn’t long before the conversation segued to him and how proud Dean was of him, although he tried to judiciously skirt the details of just exactly how dysfunctional their childhood had been. Benny, though, seemed good at reading between the lines and Dean wondered once or twice if Jody had shared details of his ORB file with the alpha, which would so not be cool.

Darlene appeared by their table and asked them if they’d like to see the dessert menu, but Dean declined. He turned down coffee too, so Benny asked Darlene for the check.

“I’ll pay,” Dean said.

Benny leaned forward. “Let me, Dean.”

Dean screwed his nose up and opened his mouth, ready to make some snarky comment about not being some helpless omega in need of a big strong alpha to foot his bills, but Benny got in first.

“Ain’t an alpha/omega thing,” he said. “It’s just that Cain’s a friend and I’ve got a standing discount here. So please. Let me pay.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

Benny smiled. “Oh, I’m sure, _Cher_.”


	3. We gotta make a decision

_You got a fast car_  
_Is it fast enough so we can fly away?_  
_We gotta make a decision_  
_Leave tonight or live and die this way_

\--

Five o’clock in the morning was not Dean’s best time of day. Nor his most conscious, to be honest. But he was nothing if not stubborn and determined.

Last night, he’d dragged his mattress back into the living room, reminding Millie that tomorrow was the day when he had to start getting up real early to go to work and he didn’t want to wake her up. She’d pouted, but he’d been able to distract and redirect her and outright bribe her by promising that Uncle Sammy would bring her down to the restaurant for breakfast when she woke up—at a more reasonable hour.

Dean had showered last night before he went to bed, so this morning he simply had to get dressed, which he managed to do in the dark without waking Sam. Now he was leaning against the kitchen counter mainlining coffee in a desperate attempt to persuade his eyelids to stay up.

At twenty past five he set off across the front yard to the B&B. Benny was already there. Dean had given him a key to the restaurant when they signed the lease contract several days ago and Benny had been in several times since, stocking up. This time, though, there was someone with him; some skinny, weedy-looking guy.

“Dean,” Benny shook his hand, polite and appropriate, and Luna damn it, Dean could _feel_ his wolf rolling over and showing his belly. He gritted his teeth at the instinctive reaction and clamped down on it.

“This is Garth,” Benny indicated the weedy guy.

Dean held out his hand with a polite nod, but the guy bypassed his hand and went straight in for a hug.

Dean panicked, until he realized that the guy—Garth—smelled like a beta, and then he looked helplessly at Benny who nodded encouragingly, so Dean patted Garth on the back.

“It’s so great to meet you,” Garth enthused, letting go of Dean and stepping back.

“Yeah,” Dean managed. “You too.”

Benny was looking on approvingly.

“Okay,” the alpha clapped his hands. “Let’s get going.”

While Garth set up the Gaggia to start brewing coffee and started cooking bacon, burgers, eggs, corn cobs and onions on the grill inside, Benny took Dean outside and showed him how to heat the adobe-clay _horno_.

The predawn sky was several shades of purple, bleeding into burnt orange and Dean could feel his tee-shirt sticking to his back in the warm, humid air.

“Gonna be a hot one,” Benny said. “Especially out here by the _horno_.”

Dean nodded and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) not to imagine Benny with his shirt off.

“Alright,” Benny grinned as he opened a metal box beside the _horno_. “Let me show you how to heat this baby up.”

First, he took a pile of old paper out of the box and began to scrunch it up and throw it into the oven. Then he showed Dean how to make a teepee of twigs on top of the paper, before setting it alight. Once they had a good fire going, they began to add the wood, starting with smaller logs and Benny said they’d gradually progress to bigger ones, once the fire really got going.

“Gonna take about four hours to heat properly,” Benny said. “But once we’re using it every day, it won’t take as long.”

“Four hours,” Dean whistled lowly.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched as a black pick-up truck pulled up out the front.

“Don’t worry, _Cher_ ,” Benny said. “We’ll have plenty of pit-smoked-meat for lunchtime. Until then, we got egg and bacon rolls and bacon cheeseburgers. Now, brother, can you watch the fire while I head inside to check how Garth’s doing?”

Dean nodded and Benny disappeared inside the restaurant.

Dean took a deep breath and stared into the flames. So far, he _liked_ Benny and his wolf rolled over and wagged his tail whenever he got near the alpha. It left Dean feeling nervous and unsettled, because he didn’t exactly have a good track record with alphas. 

He hadn’t dated since he had Millie and even before then, he’d mostly dated beta girls. Pheromones didn’t matter as much to betas and their sense of smell wasn’t as good as an alpha’s or an omega’s.

Both Cassie and Anna had told him that all a straight beta girl really needed was a male-shaped person with a working dick, who she otherwise liked, and he fit that bill, despite his omega pheromones. Not all omega-males did; it wasn’t uncommon for them to be, uh, _underendowed_ in the penis department, and to prefer to get their sexual pleasure from being penetrated. Dean, though, would be considered well-endowed even for a beta, he enjoyed pleasing his partner, and he had decent enough orgasms from the way intercourse stimulated his dick.

Benny had been nothing but polite and courteous, but Dean could _scent_ him and he could _see_ the looks Benny was giving him, so Dean _knew_ the alpha was attracted to him. Benny wasn’t acting on it though. And Dean sure as hades wasn’t going to make a move. Not because he was some shrinking violet omega; not because omegas were supposed to be the pursued, not the pursuer, but because he wasn’t sure he wanted an alpha in his life. Sure, his _wolf_ liked the idea, but the human part of him had a lot of issues when it came to alphas.

Dean looked up at the sound of a loud throat clearing. Garth was shuffling beside him and had clearly been trying to get his attention for a while.

“Boss wants you inside,” he said. “I’ll take over out here.”

Benny was chopping up red cabbage when Dean entered the restaurant, making a big batch of coleslaw to go with the three bean salad that Garth had already made.

“Show time,” Benny nodded at the front door. Dean could see maybe half a dozen people milling around outside. “Thought you might like to do the honors.”

When Dean just looked perplexed, Benny huffed out a laugh. “Go turn the _closed_ sign to _open_ and open the door, let the customers in.”

“Oh. Right!”

The six men who were waiting out front were all beta wolves. They greeted Dean cordially enough and all seemed to know Benny. Which Dean guessed made sense, since they were all clearly regulars.

“Y’all goin’ out for flounder?” Benny asked. “Got some fresh shiners in the bait shop if you’re interested.”

The guy was interested and he and Benny disappeared into the adjoining bait shop while Dean assembled egg and bacon rolls for everyone else.

“So how you settling in?” one of the guys asked Dean.

Dean smiled his professional smile. “So far, so good.”

The doorbell jangled and a couple more people came in and asked for bacon cheeseburgers, cobs of corn, and fries.

Garth, meanwhile, came in and collected several pre-prepared trays of meat, telling all and sundry that the barbecue would be ready by about eleven and ‘sellin’ until sold out’.

Between the bait shop and the restaurant, Dean stayed busy the whole morning. At half past nine, Sam came in with Millie.

Dean watched as his alpha brother stopped just inside the door and scented the air, his brow furrowing. Ah, shit.

Sam hadn’t met Benny yet.

Dean had very sensibly arranged to meet Benny at the B&B rather than the house when they’d signed the lease contract and Dean had handed Benny the keys. Mostly, that was because Dean wanted to establish that he was the one in charge of his family’s business dealings, not his kid brother. But also, there was the whole issue of Benny being attracted to him and Dean knew that his own scent changed around the alpha, and the last thing he wanted was his alpha younger brother to get territorial with Benny.

Sam’s eyes narrowed and Dean’s stomach flip-flopped as he realized that wish was doomed to failure, Luna dammit. He should’ve given the stupid knot-heads the chance to get the metaphorical pissing contest out of the way in private.

Sam prowled toward the counter, head high, eyes red-tinged, and stuck his hand out.

“You must be Benny.”

The older alpha’s eyes were also red-tinged as he gripped the offered hand. “Sam,” his tone was silk-coated steel.

Dean cleared his throat loudly and the alphas reluctantly disengaged, but couldn’t seem to stop posturing.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said sharply. “You’re both big bad alphas. I don’t need either of you pissing a circle around me, okay?”

Benny’s eyes went very wide and for one scary moment, Dean thought he’d really fucked up, and then Benny threw back his head and laughed.

“You’re right, Dean,” he said. “I apologize for my behaviour.” He turned back to Sam. “It _is_ good to meet you. Dean talks about you a lot.”

Sam huffed. “Well he hasn’t said a damn thing about you. Though I guess I know why. It’s, uh, good to meet you too.”

Benny squatted down in front of Millie. “And this little lady must be Millie. _Chere_ , you got the cutest blonde pigtails I’ve ever seen. And beautiful big green eyes, just like your omma,” he held out his hand. “I’m Benny. I’ve heard a lot about you too.”

Millie looked at Dean and when he nodded she shook Benny’s hand shyly.

Benny stood up. “Dean, you wanna take your break with your family?”

Dean absolutely did. He organised bacon and egg rolls and sweet iced tea all around and then ushered his brother and his daughter to the table in the farthest corner.

“So,” Sam said, running his fingers through the condensation on his iced tea glass. “You never mentioned that Benny’s an alpha.”

Dean glared at him. “Does it matter?”

Sam sighed. “No. Just…If he tries to take advantage…”

“You’ll be the second to know I ain’t taking his shit,” Dean said through gritted teeth. “Right after I drum it though his thick alpha head.”

Sam _meant_ well. Most alphas _meant_ well. But that didn’t change the fact that all of their ‘rules for dating my omega’, which generally threatened teeth and claws in wolfskin combat, were inherently sexist. Dean had his own rules for alphas; namely, respect me or my own teeth and claws will come out.

“Omma?” Millie said. “Benny isn’t stinky. He smells nice, like Uncle Sammy.”

Dean looked hard at his daughter. “Really?”

She nodded.

Beside him, Sam shuffled uncomfortably.

“She’s not wrong,” Sam said quietly. “He’s got a sort of…pleasant, homey smell.”

“Huh,” Dean said. “Well, he’s one of the pack’s mentors, so I guess maybe that’s something that comes with being part of the leadership group of a pack?”

Sam shrugged. Neither of them had any experience with traditional pack dynamics.

“Still,” Sam said. “You need to be careful. You don’t exactly have the best judgement when it comes to alphas.”

Dean felt himself go cold all over as his heart lurched to a standstill.

“Seriously?” he said quietly.

Sam was biting his lip and stinking like guilt and regret.

“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Didn’t you?” Dean said.

Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry for implying…” he trailed off and stared at Dean with wide sorrowful eyes.

Dean stared at his brother for a moment and then sighed. “I gotta get back to work. I’ll see you later,” he turned to Millie. “Love you, sweetheart. You be good for Uncle Sammy and I’ll see you after I finish work, okay?”

Millie nodded and reached across for a cuddle, which Dean gladly gave her.

He was quiet after they left and Benny drifted silently to his side.

“Everything alright, _Cher_?”

“ _Dean_ ,” the man himself growled.

Benny frowned.

“You call me _Dean_. I’m not your _Cher_ or your _Sweetheart_ or whatever.”

Benny bowed his head. “I apologize.”

Dean stared at him. “That’s it?” he imitated the alpha’s deep drawl. “ _I apologize_?”

Benny met his stare and it felt to Dean like the alpha was looking right into his soul. “I won’t use terms of endearment with you unless our relationship develops in a way that means it would be appropriate.”

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word in edgeways, Benny added, “And I’ll make sure to have your permission first, even then.”

Dean narrowed his eyes and then took a none-too-subtle sniff, but he could detect nothing but honest sincerity, so he huffed out a short ‘good’ and went to check on the barbecue.

Later that afternoon, after Garth had gone home, but while Benny and Dean were still closing up the restaurant, a redheaded girl with a button nose pushed her way past the closed sign with a big goofy smile on her face.

“Hi,” she grinned at Dean. “I’m Charlie,” she held out her hand. “You must be Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean shook the offered hand and scented subtly. Omega.

“Hi Benny,” Charlie waved over his shoulder at the alpha behind the counter.

“Thanks for coming, _Chere_ ,” Benny said.

Dean’s eyes roamed between the two of them. “So…you two…?”

Charlie’s eyes widened. “Me and Benny? Hades no. No offense, Alpha. It’s just…I’m a lesbian. Alpha, beta, omega, human, doesn’t matter, so long as they’re a woman.”

Dean was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. “This really is a progressive pack, isn’t it?” he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I met Jody and Donna the other day.”

Charlie lit up. “They’re awesome, right?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, they seem pretty cool.”

“So I hope you don’t mind, but Benny asked me if I would watch your little girl while he helps you and your alpha fix up Betsy’s old place.”

Dean frowned. “He did, did he?”

Charlie’s eyes widened again. “Subject to your approval, obviously. He figured being new in town you wouldn’t have anyone you could call on to babysit yet, and he was worried about your daughter maybe getting hurt while everyone was busy working on the house. He said your alpha’s watching her while you’re here, but he’ll be helping with the house, so… ”

Wow. Charlie sure spoke fast. Dean sifted through everything she’d just said.

“My _brother_ is watching her,” he corrected.

“Ah,” Charlie chewed at her bottom lip. “So…your _brother_ is your alpha of record?”

Dean lifted his chin. “Yeah.”

“Your daughter’s alpha-sire…isn’t…around?”

“Nope,” Dean said, trying to inject as much finality as he could into the word.

Charlie drew herself up tall and met Dean’s eyes. “And is that something we’re sad about, or was it good riddance?”

Dean couldn’t quite help his bark of laughter. “Oh, it was definitely good riddance. I thank Luna every day that asshole didn’t try to stake a claim.”

Charlie held his eyes for a moment before nodding decisively. “Okay,” she said, “now onto the serious stuff,” her eyes narrowed. “Wars or Trek?”

\--

The next month passed in a blur. Dean got up early Monday through Thursday, worked at the restaurant until 2.00pm and then worked with Benny and Sam on fixing up the house while Charlie watched Millie. On Fridays, Sam took over his shift at the restaurant and then worked with Benny on the house while Dean spent the whole day with Millie; Charlie had her own stuff going on Friday afternoons, so she wasn’t available for any babysitting and Dean was delighted to get an extra day to spend with Millie. 

The end of the first week of their new routine saw Mille turn five too and somehow Benny found out and threw a small party for her at the B&B. Sam called Dean to come down when they closed up on Friday, and surprised them both with streamers, balloons and a pink princess cake. It was just Benny, Charlie (who popped down in her break), Garth, Sam, Dean and Millie, but it was still nice. 

Both Benny and Charlie were fast becoming good friends and Dean loved the fact that Charlie was irreverent, quirky and not at all your stereotypical passive, Stepford-wife-style omega-female. She was really smart too, and had already somehow managed to hook them up with free cable and a seriously robust internet connection.

Dean had met a few other pack members over the past month—various Pack members kept coming in to do specialist bits of work on the house or to see Benny about something—and Dean had to admit, a lot of them were pretty non-conformist.

There was Kevin Tran, an alpha-male who played the cello, spoke six different languages, worked from home as a translator, and generally presented as a nervous, weedy nerd. He’d come to the house with his mate Ezekiel, an omega-male electrician who put new wiring in their house. Zeke was taller than Dean and every bit as broad, and looked like he could break his alpha in two if he wanted to. There was Eileen, an omega-female who was deaf, ferocious, and, at just twenty years old was working as a rookie cop for the NOPD. She’d stopped by one day to talk to Benny about something and Sammy had been smitten from the moment she gave him a dressing down for questioning whether a deaf omega could really work as a cop, calling him both ableist and sexist and then promptly throwing him to the ground and ‘arresting’ him. And there were Ed and Harry, an Alpha-male couple who were both plumbers—and just about the unlikeliest Alphas that Dean had ever met.

Honestly, as far as meeting _were_ stereotypes went, Benny was one of the most typical and even he was an incredibly laid back alpha. He was always unfailingly polite and respectful with Dean, but even through the sandalwood soap and cologne that he wore, Dean could scent his growing unspoken attraction. He and Dean talked for hours, about anything and everything. They had similar taste in music, literature and movies, and they both loved to cook. Dean genuinely enjoyed his company. The alpha had even subtly _flirted_ , but that’s as far as it went. He certainly hadn’t told Dean he wanted to bend him over the nearest surface and pound him but good, which was about as subtle as most alphas usually got with him.

Dean had the very distinct impression that Benny had no intentions of making a more obvious romantic move on him without a hand-engraved invitation and despite the fact that Dean thought Benny was sex on legs, he wouldn’t be issuing any such invitations. For a start, he still wasn’t sure he even wanted an alpha in his life; no matter how much his wolf liked the idea. His human side…wasn’t _entirely_ opposed to the idea of dating Benny, but he didn’t just have his own well-being to consider, he was omma to an omega daughter. Trusting the wrong alpha could mean Millie getting mated off the moment she hit puberty and Dean just couldn’t take the risk, no matter how much his wolf insisted that Benny was someone he could trust.

Even though Dean only worked four days a week, the B&B was open six. Benny worked five days, and took the whole weekend off, but Garth worked all six days, working Saturdays with two beta women, Andrea and Bess. Sunday, the B&B was closed.

So Dean decided to have a barbecue on the coming Sunday for all of their new friends. Saturday morning, he left Sammy doing yardwork and headed down the highway to Rouses Supermarket with Millie.

There was a Piggly Wiggly in town, but Dean figured the bigger supermarket just outside of Belle Chasse would have a better selection and would probably be cheaper too. And given that he needed to do a general grocery shop as well as get stuff for the barbecue, Dean wanted to watch the budget.

He was standing in the cereal aisle with a full cart discussing the relative merits of Cheerios vs Captain Crunch with Millie when a middle aged woman stopped beside them. She gave Dean an approving nod and then turned to smile at Millie.

“What a good Daddy you’ve got, doing the grocery shopping for your Mommy.”

Millie frowned. “He’s not my Daddy.”

The woman looked apologetically at Dean. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re so good with her I just assumed you were her father.”

Dean scented subtly. Human. “I’m her omma,” he said. 

The woman’s eyes widened. “Really? You’re a werewolf?”

Dean nodded. “Teeth, fur and claws,” he confirmed.

The woman shuddered and then glanced briefly back at Millie, before lowering her voice. “And you actually gave birth to her?”

“Yep.”

The woman looked supremely sceptical. “You don’t look…you know…”

“I don’t look what?”

“Feminine.”

Dean sighed. “That’s because I’m not a woman. I’m an omega-male.”

The woman blanched. “Were you bitten? Are you a slave to an alpha?”

“What? _Seriously_? Werewolves _can’t_ turn humans with a bite. We’re _lycan_ , you’re human. We’re a different species, not a diseased human.”

“It’s not natural for a man to give birth,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing.

“Maybe not,” Dean said, “but it _is_ natural for an omega-male werewolf to give birth.”

The woman gave him a look of disgust and walked away.

“Omma?” Millie tugged on Dean’s hand. “Why did that lady say you’re not natural?”

“Because she’s human,” Dean said with a sigh.

He couldn’t help but notice, as he finished the grocery shopping, that he was attracting stares and whispers. Quite honestly, he was a little surprised. The supermarket was only a half hour drive from one of the biggest remaining traditional Packlands around; and sure, omega-males weren’t that common, but surely the locals were familiar enough with werewolves not to gawk at one.

Dean was loading his groceries into the car when he heard someone approaching noisily. He ignored them until someone shouted, “Hey, _bitch_?”

Dean turned slowly. There were two men standing behind him, both with beards and beer-guts, one of them wearing a tee-shirt that read _Human Pride_.

That explained a lot.

“You must be new to the area,” Human Pride said.

“That’s right.”

Human Pride harrumphed. “Well, we don’t like your kind around here. You might wanna stick to one of the werewolf towns, like Jean-Lafitte.”

“Noted,” Dean turned his back and finished loading his groceries.

“Omma?” Millie said, once she was safely strapped into her car seat. “Why don’t those humans like werewolves?”

Dean sighed. “Because they’re racist. They don’t like anyone different.”

Millie nodded. “They’re like that man at the truck stop. They’re jealous because they don’t have a wolf inside of them.”

They were probably scared too. Humans didn’t have sharp teeth and claws and despite all the public information campaigns, far too many humans—just like that woman in the supermarket— _still_ believed that a bite from a werewolf could turn them into some kind of zombie-wolf, a mindless slave to an alpha, unable to control their shifts. Dean blamed Hollywood for that one; as well as Human Supremacist propaganda.

When Dean arrived back at the house, Sam was sitting on the front porch with his shirt off, drinking a beer with a small dark-haired women. The two were deep in conversation and the girl was very obviously flirting with Sam, who was lapping it up.

Dean unbuckled Millie and set her down, before opening the trunk and lifting four shopping bags out.

“Yo, _Alpha_! Come put those muscles to good use.”

The woman’s lips twitched in irritation, but Sam was on his feet and bounding over immediately.

“Dean,” he said. “Come and meet Ruby. She lives just down the road with her Uncle Mark. They’re new in town too. Unaffiliated like us. From Michigan originally.”

Ruby smiled wanly. “So you’re…mates?” she said.

Sam’s eyes widened. “No. He’s my brother.”

“Hi,” Dean said. Now that he was close enough he could scent that she was a beta; and something about her scent was really off-putting to him. “I’d shake hands, but…” he held up the shopping bags and gave her an insincere smile.

“Oh. Okay. I guess,” Ruby stood up “I’m gonna get going. You’ve obviously got shit going on.”

“Wait!” Sam said, as she made her way down the front steps. “We’re having a barbecue tomorrow. You should come.”

Ruby smiled coyly. “Maybe,” she said.

“Dude,” Dean said when she’d gone.

Sam stalked through the front door with his load of shopping bags, Dean on his heels.

Millie pushed past them both and skipped to her room.

“Sam, seriously?” Dean continued.

“What?” Sam set his bags down on the counter. “I can be friends with a girl. It doesn’t have to be sexual.”

Dean nodded. “You can. But I can smell when you’re attracted to someone.”

Sam scowled. “Well, she’s hot. It doesn’t _mean_ anything. I’ll bring in the rest of the bags, you unpack.”

Dean sighed. He was being a hypocrite and he knew it. He’d spent his whole life rebelling against stereotypes, but when it came to his baby bro, he wanted him to have the whole omega mate, white picket fence and 2.5 pups. A relationship with a beta meant no pheromone bond, no sex without a knot ring, because betas weren’t built to take a knot, and probably no children, because betas weren’t very fertile at the best of times and without a knotting, there was little chance of them catching. It wasn’t what Dean wanted for his brother, but if _he_ wanted it, who was Dean to criticize?

Sam dumped the rest of the shopping bags on the counter and started unpacking without being asked.

“Hey,” Dean said.

Sam didn’t look up.

“Sammy, look at me.”

He waited until his brother made eye contact. “If it turns out it _does_ mean something…Whatever makes you happy, man.”

Sam’s smile was like the sun coming out.

He was somewhat less a ray of sunshine when Dean relayed his encounter with the Human Pride douchebags in Belle Chasse.

“So I guess I’ll be shopping at Piggly Wiggly from now on,” Dean concluded.

Sam scowled. “It would’ve been nice if someone gave us a heads up on places to avoid. I guess we should get the low down on local trouble spots when everyone’s over tomorrow.”

\--

Dean couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this content. His yard was full of werewolves who were all having a great time, all enjoying his food, and all getting along. No one was drunk (someone had always been drunk at any get-together involving John Winchester; usually John), there was no underlying sexist tension, no hint that there could be violence just below the surface, and there was no grief or despair to mar the occasion. Dean thought that it made a nice change.

Benny was standing on the other side of the yard, chatting happily with Garth, Bess and Andrea.

Donna and Jody were up the other end of the porch arguing the relative merits of the television show Ghost Hunters with Ed and Harry

 _Bad Moon Rising_ was pumping out of a set of Bose speakers that Charlie had apparently found when they fell off the back of a truck.

Yeah. Dean wasn’t asking too many questions either. 

Sam had connected his cell phone to the speakers via blue tooth and had then fired up an appropriate playlist. He was currently dancing—or something that could possibly pass for dancing—with some of the younger wolves. There was Eileen, who said she could _feel_ the music’s vibrations and, besides, seemed very happy to hold Sam close and let him rock against her; Charlie and her latest crush Dorothy; Claire and Alex—Jody and Donna’s early teenaged adopted omega-daughters—and Kevin, who was wearing a pink tutu today. Millie was running around out there too, along with Ben and Elijah; identical twins who were also five years old. 

The twins’ omma Lisa, and Kevin’s mate Zeke, were both sitting on the porch with Dean.

Dean was drinking a beer, Lisa had refused one because she didn’t like beer and Zeke had refused one because he was eight weeks pregnant, which Dean hadn’t realized.

“Congratulations, man,” Dean said. “Is this your first?”

Zeke confirmed that it was with a shy smile, his hand coming down to cup his belly. At eight weeks, he was just starting to show. Werewolves only had a six month gestation period, so things moved along faster than in a human pregnancy. And also, Zeke was having triplets, which he was a little nervous about. In fact he was understandably a little nervous about the whole thing and keen to get Dean’s advice.

Lisa rolled her eyes. “I keep telling you, it’s no different for an O-boy than it is for an O-girl; we both got an O-channel and that’s what the babies come out of.

Dean nodded. “And you give birth in wolfskin, so your wolf will just kinda…take over. It’s all pretty instinctive.”

Zeke chewed at his bottom lip and then glanced at Lisa, before lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Man to man,” he said to Dean, “does it hurt?”

Lisa rolled her eyes again and Dean grinned. “Like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said cheerfully. “Worst damn pain I’ve felt in my whole life. But you get something to show for it. Three somethings in your case.”

Dean’s scent soured a little and he took a deep breath, trying to rein in the old pain. He felt Lisa’s hand on his arm and met her eyes, which were asking the question, even if her lips weren’t moving.

Because it was not common for an omega werewolf to only give birth to one pup.

He nodded. “I had two pups. One was stillborn.”

“I am so sorry,” Lisa leaned over and hugged him, hard.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Thanks. It was…a rough time.”

“And the alpha-sire…?” Lisa said carefully from somewhere behind his shoulder.

Dean snorted and pulled back. “Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly a _planned_ pregnancy.”

Lisa and Zeke must have heard everything he wasn’t saying in his tone, because they both looked horrified.

“Hey, whoa,” he said, holding his hands up. “I’m okay,” he looked over at Millie laughing with Ben and Elijah. “ _We’re_ okay.”

He is now, anyway.

Unless the alpha uses a condom and a knot ring every time, sharing a heat with an alpha means getting knocked up; no ifs, buts or maybes; so it’s usually something incredibly special; a beautiful, loving, momentous occasion; something that a couple has planned and agreed upon well ahead of time.

That is, unless an omega goes into heat early; unless they’re a long way from home when it happens; unless they’re desperately trying to make it to the safety of a Heat Shelter when a group of alphas corners them. 

They don’t call it rape. Not when an omega is in heat. Because often, the omega is _literally_ asking for it. Begging even. And you can’t expect an alpha to resist that. Can’t expect them to escort the completely out of it omega to the safety of the nearest Heat Shelter unmolested. It’s quite understandable that any alpha who comes across an omega in heat will mount them and fuck them, again and again, until they’re knocked up. It’s what nature intended, after all. And of course, there are no consequences for the alpha. If the omega didn’t want to get pregnant, then the omega should’ve taken steps to ensure their own safety.

Dean swallowed his pointless fury and bitterness and took another deep breath. He fixed a fake smile on his face. “Who wants another drink? Lisa? Zeke? Another iced tea? No? Just me then? Okay.”

He escaped inside and opened the fridge, enjoying the cool blast of air while he stared sightlessly at the shelves and tried to regain his equilibrium.

The sound of a throat clearing made him jump. Peering over his shoulder, Dean spotted Benny, standing in the doorway.

“Can I get you another beer?” Dean asked, pulling one out for himself.

Benny nodded. “Thank you, brother,” he said moving into the room to take the beer that Dean handed him.

Dean picked up the opener he’d left out on the counter earlier, opened his own bottle and then passed it to Benny to open his. Just being around Benny was calming Dean’s wolf, making him feel…soothed. Safe.

“Are you okay, Dean?” Benny asked after they’d both taken a few sips in silence.

“Yeah,” Dean leaned back against the kitchen counter, feet crossed at the ankles. “Just talking pregnancy and childbirth with Lisa and Zeke.”

Benny’s eyes widened and he looked momentarily flustered. “Oh,” he said.

Dean smirked. Benny’s discomfort was adorable. “Yeah, typical alpha,” he teased. “Can’t even handle the _thought_ of someone squeezing something the size of a rock melon out of a hole the size of a grape.”

Benny’s face flushed red.

Adorable. Really.

Dean took a sip of his beer and breathed in through his nose. Interesting. The alpha was becoming aroused.

Dean’s smirk widened knowingly. “You got a breeding kink, alpha?”

Benny shook his head and his scent soured slightly, with subtle notes of guilt, embarrassment and regret seeping through.

Dean tilted his head, eyes thoughtful. “You okay?”

Benny nodded. “Yeah. Just…uh…a few stray inappropriate thoughts. I’m sorry.”

“You ever been around an omega in heat, Benny?”

Benny nodded. “Unavoidable when you live on traditional Packlands.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did you do?”

Benny frowned slightly. “Me? Nothing. Not a one of them was my mate,” he shrugged. “The omegas went off to find their mates or headed to a Heat Hut. And if they hadn’t left as soon as they realized they were in heat, I would have. No alpha is ever so compromised by pheromones that they can’t make a conscious choice to walk away, no matter what some may claim.”

Dean watched the alpha with narrowed eyes. “Question,” he said finally. “You’re attracted to me.”

Benny nodded. “That wasn’t a question.”

“No. The question is: why haven’t you asked me out? Is it because we work together?”

“Partly,” Benny said. “But mostly, it’s because dating me is…complicated.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, well dating me is complicated too.”

Benny nodded. “I know. But in a different way.”

And that, combined with the earlier comment about alphas being able to walk away, brought Dean up short, because _he hadn’t told Benny anything about his past_ and yet it sounded like he knew anyway. 

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Jody _did_ show you my ORB file, didn’t she?”

“Of course she did.”

Dean slammed his beer down on the counter and fronted up to the alpha, furious. “What do you mean ‘of course’? She had no right to show you that! Just because you’re an alpha who was thinking about working with me, doesn’t give you the right to dig into my private, personal business!”

Dean expected Benny to react with fury, which is generally how alphas reacted when he got in their face and gave them attitude. Benny though, tilted his head and frowned. 

“Dean,” he said quietly. “She had every right to show me your ORB file. You may be unaffiliated, but I’m the Pack Alpha, I need to know the werewolves in my territory.”

Dean’s stomach lurched.

“You’re the…Pack Alpha?” he said faintly.

“You didn’t know,” Benny’s tone made it a statement, not a question.

Dean shook his head. “Should’ve. Lafitte. Benny Lafitte. Son of a bitch,” Dean laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Ain’t like I didn’t see your name on the lease agreement. Guess I’ve just gotta remember that I’m the stupid brother. Should’ve let Sam handle the important stuff.”

Benny’s scent soured and he gave Dean a hard look. “I ain’t seen or heard nothing to make me think you’re stupid, Dean. Please don’t talk yourself down like that.”

Dean nodded and then swallowed. “So, uh, what kind of trouble am I in?”

Benny frowned. “For smack-talking yourself?”

Dean shook his head. “For practically attacking the Pack Alpha just now.”

“Oh. That. No, that’s fine. Just a misunderstanding.”

Dean picked up his beer again and then frowned. “So you’re not gonna tell me off for the beer either? I ain’t twenty-five yet.”

“Dean, despite what some alphas have encouraged the humans to believe, _all_ werewolves metabolize alcohol fast, so _all_ werewolves on the traditional Packlands are allowed to drink at eighteen.”

“We’re not technically on the Packlands here.”

Benny shrugged. “Close enough. And I ain’t the police.”

“Huh,” Dean took a long drink and wondered why Benny was still standing calmly in his kitchen.

“Okay, then,” he said once the silence had dragged on for a while. “I can definitely see why you wouldn’t want to ask me out. Someone like me ain’t exactly Pack-Alpha-mate material.”

To Dean’s surprise, Benny shook his head and laughed. “Well I have three things to say to that,” he said. “Firstly, I want to ask you out very much, but I assumed you wouldn’t want the hassle of dating a Pack Alpha and I didn’t want you to feel pressured. Secondly, you are very much Pack-Alpha-mate material; you’re good with people and you’re strong—I would consider myself a lucky wolf if you chose to submit to me as your alpha-mate.”

Dean gaped at him, because _seriously_?

“Benny, I’m nobody,” he began, but Benny cut him off.

“And thirdly,” the Pack Alpha said with what Dean could only describe as a firm brow, “If you _were_ my mate, I would feel obligated to correct your misconceptions about your own self-worth. The only person around here who doesn’t seem to value Dean Winchester is Dean Winchester.”

Dean opened his mouth and then closed it again, because he had no idea how to respond to that. Usually, when alphas talked about ‘correcting’ him it came with huge doses of dominant pheromones and overt threats of abusive violence, often sexual in nature. But Benny just smelled like his usual strong, steady self and Dean honestly couldn’t imagine him being violently aggressive toward his mate.

Dean took another sip of his beer, while he thought. He _had_ been attracted to alphas before; mostly alphas on television who were safe fantasy material; but once or twice, an actual real alpha had caught his eye. His wolf, though, had never wagged his tail and rolled over for one before. Not until Benny. As for his human self, just the mere idea of submitting to an alpha had always made him feel physically ill. He hadn’t even tried to imagine seriously submitting to Benny, because he was pretty intellectually sure that he didn’t want an alpha in his life. But even his human self _liked_ the alpha and thought he was hot. Would submitting to him really be so bad?

Dean took another swig of beer and allowed his imagination to run wild. He pictured himself _presenting_ for the alpha, bending over with his legs spread; offering up both of his holes. Would the alpha want to fuck his ass as well as his o-channel? Dean imagined Benny’s hands on him and his wolf, of course, liked that idea, very much. His human brain wasn’t having a problem with it either. Apparently he didn’t just _like_ Benny, he trusted him too. And they _were_ only talking about a date. He could _date_ an alpha. It didn’t _have_ to lead to sex. His wolf whined, unhappy at that train of thought. And, okay. Dating probably _would_ lead to sex. But it didn’t have to lead to _mating_. His wolf whined again, pawing piteously inside his mind. Apparently his wolf _liked_ the idea of being mated to Benny. Dean told him to be quiet.

Benny, meanwhile, was standing very quietly, and obviously trying not to react at all to Dean’s growing arousal, which earned him extra bonus points as far as Dean was concerned.

Dean came to a decision.

“Benny,” he said, “If, hypothetically, you asked me to go on a date with you, I would, hypothetically, say yes.”

Benny released the breath he’d been holding. “One date I can do,” he said. “After that, like I said earlier, it gets complicated.”

“Complicated, how?”

Benny’s lips thinned. “I’m the Pack Alpha. If I’m genuinely interested in someone, if I’m considering that one day, maybe, they could be my mate, then there are certain formalities that have to be gone through. I have to officially court them, which means first getting formal permission from their alpha of record to do so; then introducing them formally to the Pack. There are…ceremonies. It’s all very…”

“Formal?” Dean interjected with a wry smile.

“Yeah. You can see why I’m hesitant to subject someone to all that. And that’s not even _mentioning_ all the responsibilities they’d have to shoulder as Pack Alpha-mate. Being Pack Alpha-mate, it’s not just being my mate, it’s a _job_.”

Dean winced. “Right. And I might be fun for a roll in the hay, but for an important job like that?” he shook his head.

Benny stared at him. “Well here’s something else for you to consider,” he said, and for the first time ever, Dean could hear the threads of alpha in his tone. “That is the fourth time in fifteen minutes you’ve displayed appalling self-worth and spoken disparagingly of yourself. If we were officially courting, I would spank your ass red for that.”

Dean’s mouth fell open. And then fell even further open when he realized that his wolf was wagging his tail enthusiastically at the idea.

“You are a strong, competent, capable man, Dean, and if I were your alpha I wouldn’t tolerate anyone saying otherwise, not even you.”

Dean shook his head and Benny pointedly raised one eyebrow.

“I’m not disagreeing,” Dean assured the alpha. “It’s just…I’ve been hearing that whole ‘wolves need discipline’ line my whole life and in the past, whenever an alpha tried to lay down the law with me, my wolf got pissed and went straight into fight mode.”

“And now?”

Dean met his eyes. “Well I’m not pissed and attacking you, am I?”

“Why do you think that is?”

Dean shrugged. “My social worker always told me I was wired wrong because of trauma. So I think…maybe…I feel safe with you?”

Benny looked like he was sucking lemons. “Your social worker? Were they human?”

Dean shook his head. “Beta wolf.”

Benny snorted. “I’m guessing human educated and largely scent blind. Your wolf is _strong_ , Dean. Not many alphas are going to be strong enough for him.”

Dean bristled. “You’re saying I need a strong alpha to control me?”

Benny frowned. “No, Dean, I’m saying you need a strong alpha to be _worthy_ of you. Your wolf isn’t going to submit to just anyone, you know.”

Dean ran a hand across the back of his neck. “So what makes you think he’ll submit to you?”

Benny smiled, wolfish and predatory. He stalked slowly across to where Dean was leaning back against the counter and then leaned in close. Dean didn’t even think, he just offered his neck.

“Oh Dean,” Benny breathed. “Your wolf has _already_ submitted to me. It’s the man I’m waiting on.”

Dean closed his eyes and shuddered. When he opened them again Benny was still standing close, his eyes intense and Dean couldn’t help himself, he tilted his head and drifted forward and a moment later Benny’s lips were on his, tentative at first, then more confident as Dean responded, licking his way into Dean’s mouth, sucking on his tongue, and Dean could do nothing but take it, inhaling the breathtaking scent of _Benny_ - _Alpha-Mine_.

Dean whined, high and needy when Benny broke the kiss and stepped back, clearly making an effort to rein in his pheromones.

For a moment, Dean felt lost and then he blinked and smiled, grateful to the alpha for his self-control, because his own had just gone out the window.

“Okay,” he said. “Dating. Let’s try it.”

Benny took a deep breath. “Here’s what we’ll do. Tomorrow, I’ll bring you a whole stack of books about Pack Law and Pack History. It’s pretty much what I’d give you to read if you were thinking about asking to join the Pack. I’ll just slip in a few extra about the role and responsibilities of the Pack Alpha-mate. You read all those and _then_ you tell me if you’re still interested in going on a date. If you are, we’ll take it from there.”

Dean was pretty sure that no books were going to make a difference to him wanting to go on a date, but it seemed to be important to Benny that he knew what he was getting into and Dean appreciated that, so he agreed.

Benny grinned. “Okay.”

And then he sauntered out of the house with the swagger of a werewolf who was very pleased with himself.

Dean ran a hand across his lips and then closed his eyes and focused on his wolf. 

_I hope you know what you’re doing_ , he told him, _because I think we just got engaged to get engaged._


	4. My old man's got a problem

_You see my old man's got a problem  
He live with the bottle that's the way it is  
He says his body's too old for working  
His body's too young to look like his  
My Mama went off and left him  
She wanted more from life than he could give  
I said somebody's got to take care of him  
So I quit school and that's what I did_

_\--_

The renovations were almost finished now, so they’d decided that they would only work on the house on weekends. This meant Dean could spend his afternoons reading up on the NOLA Pack.

When he came home on Monday afternoon with an armful of books, he found Sam on the front porch with Ruby.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam got to his feet. “Millie’s playing in her room.”

Dean nodded and went inside. He put his books down on the coffee table and then called for his daughter, letting her know he was home. Millie had a doll in each hand and was chattering away to herself.

“Hey, Omma!” she beamed when she saw him.

“How’s your day been, sweetheart?”

“Okay. Uncle Sammy was booooring today. He’s been talking to Ruby for _ages_ ,” she wrinkled her nose.

Dean’s expression sharpened. “Yeah? Did he make lunch for you?”

Millie nodded. “Mac’n’cheese. He said you used to make it with marshmallows in it.”

This last part was said accusingly, as if she hadn’t quite believed it. Or else, she thought Dean was holding out on her, in never having made it for her.

Dean sat down, cross-legged, on the floor beside her. “I did,” he confided. “It was really yucky too, but Uncle Sammy liked it. He has _no_ taste.”

Millie giggled.

“Hey now!” Sam said from the doorway. Ruby was standing at his elbow.

Dean widened his eyes comically, making Millie laugh again.

“Just callin’ it like I see it, little bro’,” he said. “You need something?”

“Uh, yeah. Ruby and I are heading out. She’s gonna take me out on her Uncle Nick’s boat and then we’re gonna get something to eat. You okay with that?”

Dean couldn’t help but notice the frown on Ruby’s face.

“Sure,” he said. “You crazy kids have fun, now.”

Sam laughed, and said he’d see Dean later, and the two walked away.

“I thought you were _his_ alpha of record,” Dean heard Ruby say, and he didn’t like her disparaging tone.

“I am,” Sam replied.

“Didn’t sound like it,” Ruby said snidely. “You sounded like a pup asking for permission to go out.”

There was a pause and Dean pricked up his ears, keen to hear how his brother would respond.

“Dean’s my big brother,” Sam said stiffly. “I’ve been looking up to him my whole life. You got a problem with that?”

If Ruby replied, they were too far away by then for Dean to hear it.

He looked at Millie and saw that she was watching him shrewdly. “I don’t like Ruby,” she said conspiratorially. “She’s mean. Stinky too.”

Dean spent the afternoon intermittently playing with his daughter and reading through the material from Benny. He made chicken and biscuits for supper and once Millie was settled into bed he curled up on the sofa and read through the papers that dealt with the role and responsibility of the Pack Alpha-mate.

A lot of it was just listening to the Pack and making sure their needs got met, which wasn’t really all that different to what he’d been doing for his family his whole life. Basically, it was running a household on a macro level instead of a micro level and Dean didn’t think it was beyond him. It did, however, require diplomacy and tact and those were things he wasn’t good at. He tended to call things as he saw them. And he sure as hades had no intentions of massaging fragile alpha egos.

But that aside, the _job_ part of being Pack Alpha-mate wasn’t something he was incapable of doing. Although, it did make him wonder why Benny had time to run the B&B, given that he was Pack Alpha and almost certainly had more responsibilities to the Pack than his mate would have. Maybe he had advisors or something. Dean would have to ask him.

Seriously, though, what worried him the most about mating an alpha was the prospect of having to submit to him. Dean ran a hand over his mouth and took a steadying breath.

It’s not like he’d never _fantasized_ about having an alpha mate; some of his best spank-bank material involved him bending over for the alpha action movie star who played Aqua Man. Dean got off hard on a regular basis to a fantasy scenario where the alpha put him in his place and made him take it, edged him ‘til he was out of his mind with need and then spread his ass cheeks and spanked his asshole until it was red and puffy and sore, before fucking his o-channel until he came so hard he blacked out. But when real life alphas tried to dominate him, his wolf just got pissed. Of course, when it came to Benny, his wolf was already enthusiastically on board. As Benny had said, it was the man in him who wasn’t sure. 

Dean checked the time and realized it was late. He had to be up early for work, so he packed everything away and hit the hay, still deep in thought.

Maybe it was like Benny said; maybe he just hadn’t found an alpha worthy of him. Dean pulled a face. Who was he kidding? He was a high school dropout and an unmated omega omma. If anyone was _unworthy_ , it was him. Hot on the heels of that thought, was the memory of Benny telling him that he’d spank his ass if Dean smack-talked himself while they were courting, and damn if that memory didn’t start to make his dick plump up and his o-channel get slick.

Fucking werewolf instincts.

Dean rolled over and sighed. Maybe he was overthinking this. Maybe he should try going with his instincts instead.

\--

When Dean got home from work on Tuesday, Ruby wasn’t around. Dean didn’t say anything, but he was quietly pleased about that. Sam did say that he’d had a good time with her on her uncle’s boat, but mostly, he wanted to talk about the pile of books on Pack Law and Pack History that he’d found on the shelf under the coffee table in the living room.

So Dean explained that he’d been asking Benny questions about the Pack and the area in general at the barbecue on the weekend and Benny had given him these books in response.

“I still can’t believe we didn’t realize he was the Pack Alpha,” Sam said. “And I still can’t believe he didn’t pull rank on me when I got growly with him at the restaurant that time,” Sam shook his head. “You think him being Pack Alpha is why he smells good, even to other alphas?”

Dean nodded and handed Sam a book on Pack Dynamics.

Sam chewed at his bottom lip. “Do you think he gave you these because he wants you to join the Pack?”

Dean met his brother’s eyes and saw the worry in them. “I think _we’d_ be welcome to join if we wanted to,” he said, stressing the _we_. 

Sam nodded. “Ruby and her Aunt and Uncle want to join the Pack,” he said, “they outright asked, but they just got given the run around. And _they_ didn’t get given any books to read.”

Dean made a mental note to ask Benny about Ruby and her family. “Perhaps he knows something we don’t?” he suggested with a shrug.

He got an epic Sammy bitchface in return. “Or maybe he just wants to get in your pants?”

Dean frowned at his brother. “So what if he does? It ain’t happening if I don’t agree to it.”

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes. “There’s a pup in the other room that says otherwise, Dean.”

Dean couldn’t believe his brother had said that. His stomach churned, his scent soured, and he got up to leave the room, keen to be away from the alpha.

“Dean wait,” Sam held up a hand and gave Dean a pleading look. “Hear me out, please. I’m just worried for you.”

“This better be good,” Dean said icily, but sat back down.

“You’re an unmated omega,” Sam said, eyes like a puppy. “If you join the Pack, he can mate you whether you want him to or not and I don’t want you to get hurt like that again.”

Dean frowned. “Who told you that?”

“Ruby.”

“Ruby? Ruby who is not a member of Benny’s Pack?”

Sam nodded. “She said that’s how it works in traditional packs.”

Dean shook his head. “Well it’s not how it works in the NOLA Pack.”

“Did Benny tell you that?”

Dean got to his feet. “Just read the damn books, Sam. And maybe try not to be such a thoughtless asshole.”

\--

The next day at work, Dean was brooding and pensive and it wasn’t long before Benny picked up on it.

“Something on your mind, chief?”

“Yeah,” Dean focused on the cabbage he was chopping. “A lot of stuff, actually.”

“Anything I can help with?”

Dean nodded. “You’re Pack Alpha, right?”

“Right?”

“So how come you’ve got time for this?” he gestured expansively.

“The restaurant?”

Dean nodded.

Benny sighed. “It’s an indulgence. Basically, I like cooking. And I like being out in the community. And it’s only until 2.00pm, which gives me the afternoon for pack matters.”

“But up until this week you’ve been helping me renovate in the afternoons!”

Pink bloomed on Benny’s cheeks. “Yeah. I mean, that was partly about mentoring and getting to know you and Sam as prospective new Pack Members, which is one aspect of my job as Pack Alpha. But I’ll confess that it was also partly about _you_ , Dean,” he paused. “As soon as I met you at Cain’s that first time, my wolf knew that you were meant to be mine.”

Dean’s blood ran cold. “Do I even have a choice?”

Benny’s eyes widened. “Of course you do. An alpha has to earn the right to mate an omega. Submission can’t be _taken_ , only given.”

Dean ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah. S’what I figured. It’s just…uh…this chick? Ruby? She’s been filling Sammy’s head with shit about _traditional_ packs.”

Benny’s eyes narrowed. “Ruby Pellegrino?”

Dean shrugged. “Don’t know her last name. She lives with her Aunt and Uncle. I think the Uncle’s called Nick. Sammy says they want to join the Pack, but you don’t seem to want them.”

Benny pressed his lips together. “Nick and Lilith Pellegrino are bad news. They were kicked out of the Michigan Pack after trying to take it over. I’ll tolerate them on the edge of my territory, but I won’t have them in the Pack. Their views don’t sit well with mine.”

Dean nodded. “I can’t say as I’ve really warmed to Ruby, and Millie doesn’t like her either, but Sam seems to think she’s all right.”

“Ruby’s a pretty beta-female, right?”

Before Dean could do more than nod, the chime over the front door jangled and a customer came in looking for bait. There was a pause in conversation while Benny went and dealt with him. When the alpha returned, his expression was serious.

“How about I come over after work tonight? I can talk with you and Sam about the Pack and any concerns either of you might have?”

Dean thought that sounded like a good idea. He wondered if he would be able to persuade the alpha to stay for supper.

\--

Having Benny over ended up being a very good idea. Sam had a lot of questions and seemed even more eager than Dean to join the Pack. Dean guessed it made sense. They hadn’t had a lot of normal in their lives growing up; it wasn’t surprising that Sam wanted safety and stability. Being part of a large, old Pack could provide that. Benny was also able to reassure Sam that while some of the larger packs, such as the Michigan Pack, had what he termed ‘human’ views around omegas, that wasn’t the case with the NOLA Pack. He explained his view, which was that true submission couldn’t be demanded or forced, it had to be willingly given or it wasn’t worth a damn thing.

“Truth is,” Benny told Sam, “outside of heats, we alphas need omegas a damn sight more than they need us. We tie them to us with a mating bond; a chemical interdependency which causes pain to both parties if it’s broken. But if it _is_ broken, statistics show that the omegas do a lot better than the alphas. Omegas who lose their mate do _better_ on average than _mated_ omegas. _Alphas_ who lose their mate suffer health setbacks, severe depression and on average have an earlier death. So what did we alphas do? Used our greater physical strength to dominate society and create social conventions designed to prevent omegas from leaving us—or at least make it difficult for them to do so,” he shook his head. “Well not on my watch, brother. There ain’t no second class citizens in my Pack.”

Benny did end up staying for supper and when Dean went to give Millie her bath and get her tucked into bed, the two alphas had a long heart-to-heart, which Dean hoped to Luna wasn’t about him.

“ _Fast Car_ , Omma?” Mille said as soon as she was settled in bed.

“Of course, baby,” Dean went and got his guitar and started to sing. Part way through he felt Benny’s presence and looked up to find the alpha leaning in the door way.

_“You see my old man's got a problem,”_ Dean sang, _“He live with the bottle that's the way it is. He says his body's too old for working. His body's too young to look like his...”_

By the time he’d finished, Dean was flushed and self-conscious. He gave Millie a kiss good night and then shooed Benny out into the living room.

Sam had already gone upstairs (now that the stairs were fixed) to the newly renovated bedroom that he’d claimed as his own. It wasn’t properly furnished yet, but they were getting there. Dean was still sleeping in Millie’s bedroom (or the living room on work nights) pending the completion of the Princess Room, which Dean was hoping to have finished next week, before Millie started school.

“You’re a good singer,” Benny said as they sat down on the sofa. Before Dean could respond, he added. “Interesting choice of lullaby.”

“Yeah,” Dean ran a hand across the stubble on his chin. “I, uh, I always liked that song. Tracy Chapman’s got a great voice and, well, I guess I could kind of relate to it, you know? I mean, our Mama didn’t _leave_ our Papa,” Dean put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, eyes pointed at the floor. “You’ve read my file, right? You know the history?”

“Some,” Benny admitted. “No real detail. Just that your Mama died when you were four.”

Dean nodded. “She _died_. Yeah,” he took a deep breath. “Sammy, he was six months old. And Mama wasn’t on suppressants. So she went into heat. Papa told me she was always pretty regular, every six months like clockwork. I mean, obviously she didn’t have the one when Sammy was just born, but the next one came right on time. Papa was at work, so she called him and he said he’d be there as soon as he could. Aunty Karen came and collected me and Sammy; you know, the usual heat routine. And…I guess…before Papa got home some alpha smelled that Mama was in heat. She fought him; fought him real hard, ‘cause he wasn’t her mate. And he killed her. And then set fire to the house to try to cover his tracks. Only he fucked it up and couldn’t get out in time, so he died too. And you know what they said on the news? _Alpha and omega die in house fire tragedy_. Like he had every right to be in our house, with our Mama. Like it was something that _happened_ to him, not something that he caused.” Dean shook his head. “But our mama didn’t _die_ , she was _killed_. And Papa…didn’t cope…with losing his mate.”

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

Dean gave him a tight smile. “Yeah. Everybody’s sorry,” he bit at his bottom lip. “So anyway, Papa raised us like a couple of alpha warriors and, uh, conveniently forgot that I was an omega until I hit puberty and then,” Dean trailed off and closed his eyes.

“And then what?” Benny said sharply, his voice threaded with alpha.

Dean opened his eyes, met Benny’s. “No,” he said. “Whatever you’re thinking…no. He didn’t _do_ anything, he just… _really_ didn’t cope. He was rarely sober after that,” he smiled sadly. “So I quit school, that’s what I did.”

Benny nodded. “I can see how you would relate to the song. It’s still a strange lullaby choice.”

Dean shrugged. “Mama used to sing _Hey Jude_ to me and Sammy. And, you know, I was playin’ it a lot when I was pregnant,” Dean’s hand fell to his stomach subconsciously. “Seemed to settle her then, so after she was born, just seemed natural to keep playin’ it for her.”

He glanced up at Benny and saw that the alpha was staring at Dean’s hand on his belly. He swallowed.

“So, uh, I guess you wanna know about…that, huh? About what happened?”

Benny shook his head. “From what the file _didn’t_ say, I’m guessing nothing good happened. You now have a beautiful daughter. I don’t need to know any more than that, unless you want to tell me. I will always want to listen to anything you have to tell me.”

Dean barked out a laugh. “Oh, you say that now, Alpha. Just you wait until I wanna talk your ear off about the Dr Sexy marathon I just watched.”

And Benny went with it, allowing Dean to change the tone of their conversation, to move it to safer, less emotionally volatile ground. Because he was good like that. A good alpha. A good man.

“Dean?” Benny said into the silence that followed.

Dean looked at him.

“So, uh, you’ve been reading up on The NOLA Pack. Do you have any more questions?”

Dean wrinkled his nose. “Nah. It’s all pretty clear. And, uh, it all sounds like something I’d like to be a part of. Sammy wants it too.”

Benny’s light blue eyes were soft and hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded. “So, uh, about that hypothetical date?”

Benny grinned. “Dean Winchester? Can I take you out on a date this Saturday night?”

Dean’s answering grin was every bit as broad. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

\--

At 7.00pm sharp, Dean walked through the front doors of Cain’s Cajun Food. Benny had wanted to pick him up, but Dean said he’d drive himself there. And it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Benny, he did. He just…liked to know he had his independence. That he could get away if he needed to. Which, did sound an awful lot like he didn’t trust Benny, but, well, it was better to be safe than sorry and it wasn’t like Dean didn’t already know that he had a myriad of issues when it came to alphas.

“Do you have a booking?” it was the same human server as last time, though Luna help him, Dean couldn’t remember her name.

“Uh, yeah,” he nodded toward when Benny was sitting. “Under Lafitte, I think. I’m with him.”

The server escorted him to Benny’s table.

“Thanks Darlene,” Benny said as Dean sat down.

“Alpha,” she said with a nod as she poured Dean a glass of iced water.

“Huh,” Dean said.

Benny raised a querying eyebrow.

Dean smiled ruefully. “Nothing. Just…uh…shoulda twigged the first time. A _human_ callin’ you Alpha?”

After a thorough study of the menu, Dean decided to go with the Surf ‘n’ Turf; sirloin steak with Cajun seasoning, lobster tail, French fries and roasted bell peppers. Benny decided to forgo his usual go-to dish of gumbo and get the same. Dean asked for his medium rare and Benny ordered his blue.

Dean rolled his eyes, but didn’t comment, because Benny was busy ordering them a beer each and they weren’t, technically speaking, on Packland so he didn’t want to draw attention to himself and risk someone asking to see his ID.

The meal, when it came, looked amazing and Dean wasted no time at all digging in.

“Oooh,” he moaned around a forkful of steak. “This is awesome. Best damn steak I’ve ever tasted.”

Across from him, Benny shifted in his seat and his scent sharpened with the tang of arousal.

Dean smirked and then moaned deliberately around another bite of what was admittedly an excellent steak. “Although I gotta say,” he pointed his knife at Benny’s plate, “the way you eat it? Practically still mooing? That’s a little gross unless you’re in wolfskin.”

Benny grinned widely and Dean could see blood on his teeth.

“Gross,” he shuddered. “How can you eat it like that without fur, claws and fangs?”

Benny shrugged. “I’m a _were_ , Dean. I’m always a wolf, no matter what skin I’m in.”

Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head.

“Speaking of wolfskin,” Benny added. “Would you like to go for a run tonight?”

Dean lit up. “Yeah? That’d be awesome. I haven’t changed since we got here. Just been too busy.”

Benny looked up, concerned. “Not even at the last full moon?”

Dean shrugged, shovelled in a mouthful of lobster. “Ain’t like it was a major one.”

In accordance with werewolf tradition, every Full Moon was celebrated to some extent, but there were only large, formal celebrations around a handful: Wolf Moon in January, The Awakening Moon in April, The Harvest Moon in September, The Hunter’s Moon in October and The Long Night’s Moon in December. Dean’s favorite was The Hunter’s Moon, because the celebrations for it came with a lot of feasting.

“Still,” Benny began, but Dean cut him off.

“Shifting…look…it’s been…complicated for me okay? Our papa, he pickled his own damn liver while he still needed it; you know what I’m saying? And for the last couple years he couldn’t shift, not even on a full moon, went out and got even more shit-faced every time me or Sammy went wolfskin. So the last few years we only shifted for the major festivals, sometimes not even then.”

Benny finished a mouthful of steak and swallowed. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but now your papa’s gone, maybe it’s time for you and your brother to get back in touch with your wolves?”

Dean finished off the last of his fries before replying. “We ain’t out of touch with them. We mourned in wolfskin and I submitted to Sam as my alpha in wolfskin. There are practical reasons too why we didn’t spend a lot of time in our wolf forms. The nearest wolfskin zone was a half hour drive away, and sure, we could’ve shifted in the house, but you really need hands inside a house, you know? That six weeks after I had Millie? When I _couldn’t_ shift back to human form? Frigging nightmare. Papa was drunk the whole time, Sam was only fourteen, and he had to basically run the house by himself _and_ look after a couple of wolves.”

“I imagine _you_ were looking after your pup, Dean,” Benny said gently.

Dean snorted. “Yeah. I guess. She was pretty easy. Just…ate, slept and cuddled. But, uh, I felt more in control in human form; I could do more; so I changed back as soon as I could,” he glanced quickly at Benny and scented the air for signs of disapproval, relaxing when there weren’t any. “I got a lot of shit for that,” he admitted quietly. “The NWPA says it’s better for the whelp-parent to stay in wolfskin for the first three months. They tried to make out that me changing back to human form after six weeks meant I hadn’t bonded properly with my daughter, which was bullshit. I mean, yeah, I wasn’t in a great headspace,” he glanced up at Benny again. “I lost one, you know? Woulda been in my file?”

Benny nodded. 

“And,” Dean added, “I didn’t exactly _plan_ to have pups at eighteen. So, yeah. Not the best headspace. But me and Millie bonded just fine. Lucky for both of us our social worker agreed.”

Benny frowned. “The beta wolf?”

“Missouri. Yeah. She ain’t so bad. Maybe she doesn’t fully get alphas and omegas, but she’s got a good heart. She’s actually become sort of like a grandmom to Millie. Which is…nice.”

“Shit,” Dean laughed and drained the last of his beer before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “This is some great first date conversation stuff, huh?”

Benny put his beer bottle to his lips and tipped it back, expression thoughtful as he swallowed.

“Dating’s about getting to know each other,” he said finally.

“Right,” Dean’s chin came up, defiant. “And all I keep talking about is the messed up stuff. There’s more to me than getting screwed over, you know.”

“I know, Dean,” Benny said, his eyes twinkled. “I’ve watched you dance in the kitchen when a song you like comes on and you think nobody’s looking. I’ve seen the joy you get from people appreciating the food you make for them. I’ve seen how proud you are of your daughter; of your brother. I’ve seen you driving your car; and Luna bless me, she’s a thing of beauty in her own right, but with you behind the wheel? Leather-clad arm resting on the open window, laid back posture, your beautiful green eyes wide and happy and content? Takes my breath away every time I see it.”

Dean grinned, wolfish and proud. “So I take it sex in the back of the car is on the table at some point?”

Benny’s answering grin was pure alpha. “Ch—Dean, that’s a safe bet to make.”

Dean ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I, uh, think I’m okay if you call me _Cher_ now.”

Benny nodded. “So, _Cher_ , you up for dessert? Cain makes a mean pecan pie.”

“Bring it,” Dean said with a decisive nod.

\--

If Benny had thought that watching Dean eat steak was a turn on, it was nothing compared to him moaning around mouthfuls of pie. He had to adjust himself several times and he knew that Dean was all too aware of his predicament if the scent of aroused and pleased-with-himself omega was anything to go by.

When Dean finished his last mouthful of pie, Benny couldn’t ask Darlene for the check quickly enough, but it wasn’t the human server who appeared beside their table a moment later, it was Cain himself.

“Alpha,” Cain said solicitously.

Benny rolled his eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you to drop the _Alpha_ crap, Cain?”

He watched Dean out of the corner of his eye, saw his small, confused frown; saw too the moment Dean realized just exactly what he was scenting. The omega froze, then took a steadying breath and met Cain’s eyes for a moment before lowering his head in a very deliberate gesture of submission.

Cain laughed. “He’ll do very nicely, Ben. No charge for tonight, it’s a privilege that you chose my restaurant to begin your courting journey.”

“We’re not courting yet,” Benny told him. “Not officially.”

Cain nodded. “May I recommend Harvest Moon as an auspicious time for the formal courting ceremony?”

Across from him, Benny felt Dean become tense.

“I was thinking the same,” he told Cain.

Cain turned back to Dean. “A pleasure to meet you Dean Winchester.”

Dean lifted his head. “You too, Alpha,” he said and his eyes and voice were steady, even if his heartbeat was not.

Cain beamed and then nodded at Benny. “Very nicely indeed,” he murmured, before heading back to his kitchen.

The moment he was through the saloon doors and back in the kitchen Dean put a hand to his heart and looked at Benny, his eyes improbably wide.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met such an old, dominant alpha before.”

“There aren’t many of them left,” Benny conceded. “Maybe a dozen in the entire world. Cain’s a little vague on the specifics.”

“How come he isn’t heading up a Pack?”

Benny smiled. “He’s been there, done that. He never mated, never found his match, so he handed his Pack over to a worthy successor and did the Lone Wolf thing for a while, wandering, searching. Landed up here a few decades back, met a human woman. Collette. A widow. Somehow, she was exactly what he needed. He fell in love and they ran this restaurant together until she died.”

“How did she die?”

“Old age. Darlene’s her granddaughter.”

Dean was speechless; which was probably just as well, because sooner or later it was going to occur to him to wonder how old Benny was and Benny would rather delay that particular conversation for a while.

With no check to pay, Benny hustled them out of the restaurant and over to where his boat was moored. She wasn’t much, just a little red-and-white runabout with a canopy, but she was reliable and convenient for zipping around the Louisiana waterways.

Benny started her up and steered them up the bayou, past Isle Bonne and over to Jones Point, where the Packland began. 

The NOLA Packland was 26,000 acres of bayous, marshes and forests and dotted around the place were Change Huts and Heat Huts, for the convenience of Pack members and visiting wolves. The official NOLA Pack Alpha residence was located on the Packland, as were the houses and offices of the Pack Alpha’s inner-circle of advisers.

Benny led Dean over to a Change Hut and showed him how to work the lockers, the he began to strip. There was a moment’s hesitation from Dean and then he followed suit. Benny very carefully kept his eyes averted.

Once naked, Benny let the change take him, his whole body rippling with energy as his bones realigned themselves and his internal organs moved about, his teeth lengthening, his fur and claws growing. Ben-wolf turned to face Dean and howled his appreciation at the beautiful omega-wolf who stood before him. Dean-wolf’s fur was a warm brown color that blended into a golden orange on his sides. It looked soft and silky and when Ben-wolf brushed against it, he found it every bit as soft as it looked. Dean-wolf whined and lowered his chest to the ground. Ben-wolf circled him, sniffing at his rump and genitals and then at his neck. Dean-wolf turned slightly, more fully offering Ben-wolf his neck and Ben-wolf scented him thoroughly and then nipped at the offered neck gently, not enough to break the skin.

The formalities taken care of, Benny nudged the smaller wolf to his feet and took off at a run, yipping at Dean-wolf to follow him, which he did.

They ran and played for hours, chasing, hiding, and eventually fighting, all with an undercurrent of arousal and the knowledge that this was leading somewhere special. Dean-wolf was quick and clever and Ben-wolf had to work hard for every small victory. Whenever the omega wolf won a round his howls of triumph filled Ben-wolf with pride and whenever he won (which was far more often) he accepted the smaller wolf’s submission with reverence, as he’d been taught. The fact that he’d been made to fight hard for his victory just made it so much sweeter.

Dean-wolf’s arousal was becoming more prominent with every victory Benny earned, every time he proved that he was an alpha, worthy of this strong, clever, beautiful omega. Finally, when a long fight ended, once again, with Dean-wolf on his belly beneath Ben-wolf, the omega whined his submission, offered his neck, and then tilted his hips.

Ben-wolf backed off and let the change back to human form ripple through him. Dean-wolf looked confused, but did likewise.

“Not like this,” Benny said. “I want our first time to be in a nice soft bed.”

Dean’s look of relief and gratitude told him that he’d made the right call.

“There’s a Heat Hut not far from here,” Benny told Dean. “Be quicker to get there on four feet.”

And he changed back and waited while Dean did the same before taking off.

\--

The Heat Hut was only small, but it was scent-sealed and secure, with a padded entry code that, once activated, could only be deactivated from the inside or overridden by the Control System in the event of an emergency. The hut was clean and well-stocked and had a king-sized solid wooden bed right in its center.

“Handy,” Dean commented.

Benny shrugged. “Pack’s got a lotta these dotted around. They’re made for heats, but it’s good to have somewhere to crash when you’ve been out on a run. Can end up kinda far from where your clothes are if you’re not too careful.”

Dean nodded and crossed to the bed, sitting down on the edge and looking up at Benny.

“Dean,” Benny moved closer. “ _Cher_ …we don’t have to do anything. If you want to just sleep and then go pick up our clothes in the morning, I am more than fine with that.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Benny, I know there ain’t nothin’ wrong with your nose. You can smell how turned on I am right now.”

“I can. But that doesn’t mean we have to…”

Dean cut him off. “I appreciate your concern, I really do. The fact that you’re taking the time to make sure you’ve got enthusiastic positive consent is…actually, it’s a huge turn on. So what do you say alpha? We’ve been flirting for over a month. You finally ready to get a little action?”

Benny prowled toward him and used a knee to push Dean’s legs apart. He stood between them and leaned down, taking Dean’s face in his hands and then kissing him thoroughly.

It didn’t take long for arousal and werewolf instincts to take control and then the kiss became heated, Benny’s tongue plundering Dean’s mouth, Dean drawing Benny to him, wrapping his legs around the alpha’s waist and rolling, pulling the alpha down on top of him, their groins slotted together, hands grasping and groping. Benny rutted and Dean arched, and he could feel himself getting wet. Another roll had them centered on the bed and then Benny pulled back and looked down at Dean with lust-blown eyes. Dean imagined that his pupils were every bit as large.

“Wanna taste you,” Benny said. “Is that okay?”

Dean nodded and the alpha lifted his legs, spread them, and got his mouth down on Dean’s opening, licking and sucking and probing with his tongue, until Dean was fighting not to come.

“Benny. Fuck. Want you inside me alpha, want you to fuck me. Please.”

Dean’s channel was clenching and throbbing and his dick was rock hard.

Benny pulled back. “Ass or channel?”

Some omegas didn’t like an alpha’s dick in their o-channel unless they were in heat; some did. Dean had no idea what his preference was and his only experience of anal sex was with a female alpha. It had been good, but her cock had been a lot smaller than Benny’s.

“Can we try channel? I’m on supps, so…”

Dean gasped as Benny slid a finger into his channel.

“You’re tight,” he said. “Which is common when you’re not in heat. You ever done this when you’re not in heat?”

Dean shook his head.

Benny reached across to the nightstand beside the bed, opened the top drawer and triumphantly withdrew a bottle of massage oil.

“Gonna open you up.”

He poured a little on his hand and then began to gently massage Dean’s channel, before sliding his finger back in, further this time, deeper. Dean relaxed against the pillows and allowed his legs to fall further open.

“That’s good, _Cher_ ,” Benny praised, before adding more oil and a second finger.

Dean moaned and thrust upwards as tingling pleasure raced up his spine and shot down his legs.

“Harder, Benny! C’mon, I’m not gonna break.”

“Don’t wanna risk tearing you,” Benny admonished, but he none-the-less added a third finger.

He thrust his fingers up into Dean once, twice, three times and then Dean bodily shoved him away.

“That’s enough. Get the fuck in me, _right now_ , alpha!” he growled.

Benny answered with a growl of his own, deep and dominant, his eyes flashing red and his incisors lengthening and Dean lowered his eyes, offered his neck and canted his hips.

Benny was on him like, well, like a wolf on a bitch in heat, taking Dean fast and hard, driving in deep in one powerful thrust, filling him and stretching him and Dean could do nothing but take it. He wasn’t going to take it passively though, oh no, Dean wrapped his legs around Benny’s waist, drawing him in deeper and he matched him thrust for thrust, shoving his hips up to meet Benny’s cock. The red in Benny’s eyes began to drain away as his wolf acknowledged the eager submission of the omega below him. 

“You okay, _Cher_?”

“So good,” Dean managed to say.

And then Benny swivelled his hips just so and the capacity for speech was entirely lost to Dean. For a long while he could only pant and moan, his eyes screwed shut against the intensity of the pleasure coursing through him. His eyes flew open though, when Benny began to swell within him, his knot, Dean realized, pushing against his inner walls, stretching him, and it was too much and not enough, his channel burning and stinging as it tried to accommodate the swelling bulge of Benny’s knot. Dean’s channel _spasmed_ and for one white hot second it _fucking_ hurt; and then he came, blindingly hard, with a wail he was grateful there was no one around to hear. His orgasm set off Benny’s, and Luna be damned, he’d forgotten how _messy_ alphas were. Dean could feel his channel soaking in alpha come and Benny’s knot might be huge, but it wasn’t keeping it all in; Dean could feel it seeping out, running down his thighs, pooling in his ass crack.

Benny lay down when he was done; his prone body between Dean’s spread legs and his head on the pillow beside Dean’s.

He nuzzled Dean’s neck and then, when Dean turned to face him, he kissed him, slow and sweet.

“You okay, _Cher_?” he said when they finally broke apart.

“Yeah,” Dean settled himself in the alpha’s arms. “That was the best damn sex I ever had.”

Benny preened, and then looked suddenly worried.

“Was that your first time with an alpha?” he asked, and Dean’s eyes filled with tears.

“Sweetheart,” Benny said, distressed.

“No…I’m not…it’s just…thank you for not counting…when I got Millie…as _sex_.”

Benny kissed him again, gentle and loving. It was nice, but Dean had more to say, so he pulled away.

“You’re the first alpha-male I’ve been with. I spent an amazing weekend with an alpha female when I was nineteen. We took turns fucking each other, it was pretty awesome, but this was better. Her cock was smaller than mine,” he laughed. “Which she was not happy about, let me tell you!”

Benny reached down and gave Dean’s semi-hard dick a quick stroke. “You want me to get you off here too?” he asked.

Dean shrugged. “Not fussed. The channel orgasm was pretty mind blowing.”

“Hmm…we’ll have to work on making you come both ways at once.”

“Huh,” Dean said.

“What?”

Dean shook his head. “Most alpha-males are all ‘omega-males don’t need penile orgasms; penile orgasms for omega-males are such a juvenile way to get off; omega-males shouldn’t touch their cocks. Yada, yada.”

Benny looked distinctly unimpressed. “Have I ever said or done anything to make you think I met the Alpha-male stereotype?”

Dean conceded that he hadn’t.

Benny raised an eyebrow. “Besides,” he licked his lips. “I wouldn’t mind taking a ride on this,” he stroked Dean’s cock again, “myself someday. If you’d be comfortable with that?”

Dean’s mouth fell open. “I mean, sure. If you want to. Personally, I prefer getting fucked, but I’m happy to switch it up once in a while.”

By now, Dean was completed hard and, with Dean’s consent, Benny used some of the leaking come and a healthy dose of oil to tease open Dean’s asshole, all the while stroking his cock. By the time Benny’s knot had gone down enough for him to slip free, Dean had been on edge for twenty minutes and he was desperate.

Benny was still hard, Luna bless alpha recovery time, and when Dean knocked his hands away, rolled onto all fours and begged for his cock, Benny was willing and able to give it.

This time, Benny fucked Dean’s ass while playing with his cock. Benny was so big that it stimulated both his o-channel and his prostate and with Benny’s hand twisting and pulling just right on his dick, it didn’t take long for Dean to come both ways, his channel clenching and spasming its way through an orgasm while his dick pulsed out come.

The whole thing was so overwhelming that Dean blacked out, or maybe just fell asleep, either way, the next time he opened his eyes it was light and Benny was showered, wearing a chef’s apron, and standing at the stove; cooking bacon and eggs, if Dean’s nose didn’t deceive him.

“You’re awake,” Benny said. “I was beginning to think I broke you.”

It was said with a smile, but Dean could see the worry in his eyes.

Dean tried to make his own smile as reassuring as he could. “Not even mildly sprained,” he said. “Just very well fucked and feeling incredibly smug about it.”

Benny lit up at that, throwing his head back and laughing.

He then suggested that Dean go and have a shower, which Dean agreed was a very good idea, given how sticky and disgusting he felt.

Alone in the small bathroom, Dean gave himself a moment to take stock. His ass was a little sore, but other than that he felt good. He stepped under the steamy water and let it pound a staccato rhythm against his shoulders, his eyes closed and his head down. So, physically fine, but how did he feel otherwise?

Pretty good actually, he decided. His wasn’t in a bad headspace at all; in fact he was pretty darn-tootin’ happy. Benny may be an alpha, but he was nothing like Alastair; nothing like Gordon; and he hadn’t panicked or felt unsafe once.

After breakfast they shifted into wolfskin and ran back to where they’d left their clothes, before shifting again and taking the boat back across the bayou into town. Dean drove them to his place and was pleased to find Sam alone with Millie; he’d half expected Ruby to be there.

At least he had expected Ruby until he caught the faint scent of a mature omega-female in the air.

“Omma!” Millie ran to him and threw her arms around his legs. “Omma, you smell different.”

Dean picked his daughter up and she immediately buried her face in his neck.

Sam followed Millie into the room with a small frown on his face.

“Sammy, you sly dog,” Dean crowed. “So who’s the lucky omega, then?”

Sam blushed. “Nothing happened, Dean. Eileen came over to help me with Millie and we played cards, that’s all,” Sam took a deep breath and wrinkled his nose. “You, on the other hand, smell…” he paused, took another sniff and frowned. “You smell…not mated, exactly. But _claimed_.” 

Millie put her hands on Dean’s face. “Is that why you smell a bit like Benny now, Omma?”

“It is sweetheart,” Dean told his daughter.

“Sam,” Benny said formally. “As Dean’s official Alpha of record I would like to gain your consent to officially court him.”

Sam blinked and looked at Dean who rolled his eyes.

“Yeah I know,” Dean said. “It’s some stupid archaic Pack rule. You gotta agree, the Pack’s gotta agree.”

“What about you?” Sam interrupted. “Do you gotta agree too?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “And I’ve already agreed. Benny wouldn’t be here asking you otherwise.”

Sam shrugged. “Okay, well, I don’t really think it should be anything to do with me. But if it’s what Dean wants; if it’s what you both want, then I, uh, give my consent.”

“Me too,” Millie said. She looked at Benny. “You make my Omma happy. He was a lot sadder before he made friends with you.”

For a brief moment Benny looked like he might cry then he pulled himself together and explained that if Sam and Dean were in agreement he’d like to present them and Millie as new Pack members at the upcoming Harvest Moon Festival and then formally and officially ask his Pack for their blessing for him to court Dean at the same time.

“Are they likely to say no?” Sam wondered.

“No,” Benny said. “It really is just a formality.”


	5. Buy a bigger house

_You got a fast car  
We go cruising to entertain ourselves  
You still ain't got a job  
I work in a market as a checkout girl  
I know things will get better  
You'll find work and I'll get promoted  
We'll move out of the shelter  
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs_

_\--_

The next three weeks were a blur. Dean finished decorating the Princess Room and Millie moved upstairs, just in time for her to start school. Lisa’s beta sons were in her class and Dean was impressed to find that half the school’s students were werewolves. None of the human kids or their families seemed to have a problem with _weres_ and Dean figured that if they did, they would’ve sent their kids to the elementary school in Belle Chasse, which (as he’d learned for himself and had confirmed by Benny) was a rabidly anti- _were_ town.

Dean made sure he was there personally at the end of Millie’s first day to pick her up and a moment after he parked the impala there was a rap on the window.

“Hi Lisa,” he said, getting out of the car and hugging her.

“Come sit in the shade,” Lisa said and they went and sat on a low brick wall underneath a bald cypress tree.

“So,” Lisa bumped his shoulder with hers, “you and Benny, huh?”

Dean couldn’t help the broad grin that spread across his face. “Yeah,” he said. “Looks like.”

She was silent for a moment. “You smell happy. A lot happier than you smelled at your BBQ a few weeks back. He’s been good for you. And I know you’ve been good for him. He was worried that he would never find his mate; that he’d never meet an omega strong and… _dominant_ enough in their own right to complement him. You guys are a great match.”

Dean ducked his head. “Thanks.”

“Did you know he’s been talking to the Pack about the Courting?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, he ran the emails and the announcement that’s up on the website past both me and Sam.”

“Pretty much everyone’s on board. There are one or two who aren’t, but they’re just jealous,” Lisa paused. “When do you think you’ll mate?”

Dean shrugged. “Dunno. Haven’t really talked about that.”

“Well you should,” Lisa said. “Because Benny will want it to be soon. And as you know, an alpha/omega mating bond has to be forged during heat sex.”

Dean felt a shiver make its way up his spine. He _did_ know that; he’d just conveniently put it out of his mind.

Lisa though, was intent on being mercilessly direct. “I know you’re on supps,” she said, “I can smell it. Probably since you stopped feeding Millie?”

He nodded. “But I’ve been planning for a while to go off them soon.”

Lisa met his eyes. “I know Millie…wasn’t planned. Do you want more pups, Dean? Have you thought about it? Have you talked about it with Benny?”

Omega biology sucked ass. Going through a heat by yourself was incredibly uncomfortable. Sweating through three days of fever and the delirious desire to be fucked repeatedly, with nothing but cold hard toys to help, was the exact opposite of fun. Going through a heat with a loving partner, was apparently amazing. Dean wouldn’t know. But it meant getting pregnant.

Unless your alpha used a condom and a knot ring, both of which alphas usually _hated_ , claiming they were really uncomfortable and reduced their pleasure considerably. So _technically_ they were a possible contraception method, but given all the pheromones and desperation, and the general alpha dislike for them, there was every chance that at least once during the three day sex marathon something would be forgotten or not put on right. In other words, it wasn’t really what you’d call a _reliable_ contraception method. Once an A/O couple had all the pups they wanted, the omega generally got fixed, at their alpha’s behest, of course. Only an alpha could sign the medical consent form for a tubal ligation. Sometimes, but only rarely, an alpha had a vasectomy instead. But it was very much looked down on for an alpha to be incapable of siring pups.

Did Dean want pups with Benny? Absolutely. Did he want them right now? That, he couldn’t honestly answer. On the one hand, Millie was five now. She was at school. It would be nice if she wasn’t too much older than all her brothers and sisters. On the other hand, Dean’s last experience of heat sex hadn’t been consensual and his pregnancy had been a complete mindfuck. Yes, he’d had counselling and a social worker. But still.

Lisa was right. There was a lot to think about. And to talk about too.

Benny came over that night to celebrate Millie’s first day at school and once Millie had gone to bed and Sam had retreated to his room, Dean made them both a chicory flavored café au lait and asked the alpha when he wanted them to mate.

Benny took a sip of his coffee and looked ponderous. “Well,” he said finally. “When do you want to stop taking the suppressants?”

“Soon. Within the next couple weeks, maybe.”

Benny nodded. “So can we mate when your next heat hits?”

“We can, but, uh,” Dean ran a hand across his mouth. “How do you feel about wearing a condom and a knot ring for my heat?”

“Can do,” Benny said, calm and unperturbed.

“Really? Just like that?”

Benny shrugged. “I want pups with you Dean, but not until you’re ready.”

And really, Dean didn’t know why he’d expected any other response. Benny had proved repeatedly that he was a progressive alpha who valued Dean as a human being and not just as a fuck toy or incubator. It truly sucked that the bar for alphas was so low, but that didn’t mean Dean couldn’t appreciate that _his_ alpha flew way over it.

“Hey, Benny,” he said, once they’d finished their coffee.

“Hmm?” Benny was half asleep on the sofa.

“My new room’s ready. Wanna see it?”

Dean waggled his eyebrows and Benny woke up _fast_.

\--

Finally, the three day Harvest Moon Festival arrived and Dean had never been happier to work for a _were_ owned business, because it meant he could take the entire Festival period off with no drama.

He, Millie and Sam were staying with Benny at the official Pack Alpha residence for the festival and truthfully, Dean wasn’t sure whether to be awed or horrified by it. The official residence was a white, triple-story southern plantation-style house and it was ornate as fuck. Fortunately, Benny had a private suite, where he actually lived, and that was a lot more comfortable and a lot less like being in a museum.

Benny’s brother, Eli was flying in for the Festival and would be staying at the house too. Dean had already met Benny’s sister, Lenore, who lived and worked in New Orleans. Lenore was an accountant and it was through her that Dean came to realize just how many businesses and how much property the NOLA Pack owned.

“I mean, I knew,” Dean told Sam later. “I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the website. It’s just…Benny’s so laid back, so informal and unpretentious and he likes working in the restaurant and…I guess it’s just real easy to forget that he’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful Pack Alphas in North America.”

Benny’s brother Eli was a saturation diver who worked maintaining and repairing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Luckily for them, he’d planned his work roster to allow him to come home for the Harvest Moon Festival this year, even before he knew that his brother was planning a Courting Ceremony; lucky because he’d been working deep and when it takes ten days to decompress, last minute decisions just aren’t possible.

Eli, Benny and Lenore were triplets, but only Benny and Eli were identical, and they were, indeed, the spitting image of each other. They smelled completely different though and Eli was a lot less laid back than Benny. He and Dean got on just fine, but Dean wasn’t in the slightest bit attracted to him.

“How come you’re Pack Alpha, not Eli?” Dean asked Benny privately, after he met Eli.

Lenore was a beta, so he knew why she was out of the running, but Eli, like Benny, was an alpha.

“Our Alpha nominated me,” Benny shrugged. “And sure, I could’ve refused it, but I wanted it, Dean. Of the three of us, I was always the caretaker, always looked out for my siblings; my cousins. Eli used to tease me that I should’ve been an omega and our alpha-sire used to scold Eli that he fundamentally misunderstood the role of an alpha. He learned as he got older, but Papa always said that I was a natural. Eli didn’t want the job anyway,” Benny chuckled. “He’s always loved the sea, always loved diving. He started out in the navy and then moved on to the oil companies. Couldn’t have done what he loved and been Pack Alpha.”

“Whereas you can still lease a B&B in town and do a bit of cooking from time to time.”

“Exactly so,” he paused. “We all have our path in life, Dean. Some find theirs quickly and some take a while to find it.”

\--

The first day of the Harvest Moon Festival was family day, with fun fair rides set up, food stalls everywhere and _were_ families from all around had turned up to take part in the festivities. 

Dean spent most of the day with Millie and Sam, just being a guest, eating and going on rides, but every now and then Benny would come and find him and introduce him to someone, and while Sam and Millie got to have their evening meal outside around the _horno_ with Benny’s inner circle of family and friends, Dean and Benny had to have a formal dinner with the State Governor and his wife, in the Pack Alpha’s formal dining room.

It was…not great. Dean made the human couple noticeably uncomfortable with his clear and obvious maleness and the wife—Ann—just couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact of him having a child that he’d given birth to. The governor—Maurice—seemed surprised to find that Dean was an intelligent human being, capable of saying more than _fuck me harder, alpha_ and breathy moans. Dean figured he’d watched a little too much _were_ porn in his day.

“Are you sure I’m the right omega for you, Benny?” Dean asked after the Governor and his wife had gone. “I mean, I’m just a high school drop out with a thick ORB file and a pup. I ain’t exactly …”

Benny cut him off before he could get any further. “Are you sure you don’t _want_ a spanking? Because this time tomorrow, that comment will earn you one.”

Even Dean could smell his own arousal, which was a little embarrassing. He squirmed uncomfortably. “Don’t think it’ll be much of a punishment, given how much the idea seems to turn me on.”

Benny pulled him in for a kiss. “It’s not really supposed to be a punishment; it’s more about getting you into the right headspace, so you’ll actually listen to me when I tell you how amazing you are, rather than just dismissing me out of hand like you do now.”

“I _am_ sorry,” Dean said. “I don’t mean to. It’s just…I’ve been hearing what a useless-piece-of-shit-only-good-for-one-thing I am my whole life. It’s gonna take a while to start believing differently.”

They made their way upstairs to Benny’s private quarters and Benny poured them both a whiskey.

Dean thought that the Alpha seemed nervous.

“So, Dean,” he said. “Before we go ahead with the official Courting Ceremony tomorrow, there’s something I haven’t been completely honest with you about, and that’s my age.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured that one out all on my own. I _did_ read the books you gave me, you know; and I _have_ combed thoroughly through the Pack website. I know how long you’ve been Pack Alpha; I know that before you were Alpha you spent a while as a fisherman and a while as a short order cook. I know you’re related to the pirate Jean Lafitte and believe me, Alpha,” Dean waggled his eyebrows, “there is definitely gonna be some trouser-ripping, omega-gets-ravished-by-pirates roleplay in our future,” he laughed at Benny’s blush. “But yeah, I can do math. And combined with what a strong, powerful alpha you are, I worked out that you’re probably fairly old. Not as old as Cain, but not in your thirties, even if you look it.”

“And you don’t mind?”

Dean shook his head. “The Winchesters are a pretty old _were_ line in our own right; not fancy or powerful, but old and loyal. And my Mama was a Campbell, the granddaughter of a Pack Alpha.”

Benny nodded; he’d obviously known; which meant he’d done his research and already knew that Dean was related to the powerful Scottish Pack.

“Both our parents had the _were_ longevity gene. If Mama hadn’t been murdered, if Papa hadn’t gone off the rails when he lost his mate, they could’ve expected to live long lives. And obviously me and Sam have got the gene too.”

“And Millie?” Benny asked softly.

Dean’s eyes turned stormy. “Yeah. They tested her for it when she was born and she’s got it.”

“It’s a recessive gene,” Benny commented.

Dean huffed. “Yeah, well, the son-of-a-bitch that _sired_ her comes from one of the most powerful _were_ families in Kansas, so no surprise there.”

Benny nodded. “You told ORB you didn’t know your attackers.”

Dean swirled his whiskey around in his glass. Benny wasn’t pushing, not really. He was just giving Dean the opportunity to talk if he wanted to. And Dean absolutely _did not_ want to talk about Alastair and Gordon and what happened at the Wolf Moon Fesitval, but he figured there were some things his future mate deserved to know.

“Yeah, well” he said. “I lied. Those alphas…they’re the alpha-sons of families that are hardcore traditionalists. If I’d tried to have their precious alpha boys charged for what they did, their alpha-sires would’ve demanded a sire test and whoever knocked me up would’ve been told to mate me to avoid the charges. And that was some shit I did _not_ need.”

Benny looked sick at the prospect.

“Yeah,” Dean said, “Imagine how I felt about it. Look, only one of them knotted me, the leader of the pack, so to speak, so I’ve always known _exactly_ who Millie’s biological alpha-sire is,” Dean paused and swallowed hard. “And I thank Luna every day that Millie was an omega-female, because if she’d been an alpha-male, he _might’ve_ tried to claim her,” he took a deep, shuddering breath. “My biggest fear today is that he’ll decide to claim her when she hits puberty so that he can mate her off to some asshole and make a profit off of her.”

Benny actually growled at that. “Over my dead body,” he said.

Dean lips curled in an almost-smile. “Thanks. It’s uh, good to know that you feel that way,” he swirled his whiskey around in his glass again before finishing it off. “C’mon, alpha, let’s hit the hay. I’m exhausted.”

Dean curled up beside Benny in the Pack-Alpha’s big, soft bed, and, much as he truly enjoyed good sex, tonight he was glad that Benny just wanted to hold him in his arms, until they both fell asleep.

\--

The second day of the Harvest Moon Festival—the actual day of the Full Moon—was less carnival and more spiritual. The fairground rides were still there, but not open, and a large altar to Luna was set up on the grounds of the Pack Alpha’s formal residence.

Dean wasn’t a particularly religious person, but he sat through a Drawing down the Moon ceremony at Benny’s side and then talked at length with the local _Hiereus._ His name was Jim Murphy and Dean had to admit that he liked him very much. Jim was honest and open and he acknowledged that out in the wider human world, things were not so good for omegas. He readily agreed that the Council of Luna could be doing more to help with that. And he managed to get Dean _talking_ , which was no mean feat.

Later that afternoon, the Pack gathered before the altar for the Courting Ceremony and when Dean peaked out and saw just how many people had congregated to take part in the ceremony he had a very tiny freak-out. There had already been a smaller ceremony earlier where he, Sam and Millie and a couple of other people had been presented as new Pack members and Dean had been expecting something of similar size now.

“Breathe, Dean,” Sam said patiently, squatting on the floor in front of his hyperventilating brother.

“This is not me,” Dean wheezed. “I’m just…”

“Dean,” Benny admonished, coming over from where he’d been talking with Jim.

“There’s _a lot_ of people, Benny,” Dean said, his eyes screwed shut.

Distantly he heard Benny say something about Lisa and then Sam disappeared and Benny’s arms were around Dean, encouraging him to scent. It helped a bit, Dean could feel the panic receding and then he smelled Millie and that got him up on his feet.

“Millie baby?”

Lisa was looking after her while Dean did this ceremony thing. Now she was here, backstage, holding Lisa and Sam’s hands. 

“Omma!” she said, running to Dean and stretching out her arms to be picked up.

Dean hugged her hard; his nose buried against her little neck.

“Why are you scared, Omma?” she asked.

“I’m not scared. Just a little nervous. There’s a lot of people out there.”

Millie looked at him thoughtfully. “There is a lot of people,” she agreed. “Did they all come to see you and Benny do the Courting?” she sounded impressed.

Dean looked at Benny, who nodded.

“That’s right, C _here_. But I think most of them came to see your omma.”

Millie nodded solemnly. “Well, he is the _best_ omma,” she said matter-of-factly, and Dean felt his heart soar.

He could do this.

\--

The Ceremony itself went off without a hitch.

Benny formally promised Sam that he would Court his omega-ward with respect and honor and that should Dean agree to mate him, he would willingly claim Millie as his daughter; with Dean’s consent. Dean’s breath hitched at Benny’s last minute addition to the traditional ceremonial words. What Benny was proposing meant that if Dean allowed Benny’s claim once they were mated, Alastair would never be able to claim Millie and that meant a lot to Dean.

Sam gave his formal approval for the Courtship and it was then time for Dean to promise that he would accept the Pack-Alpha’s courtship with respect, honor and submission.

No one from the NOLA Pack objected to the Courting (Dean had been quietly terrified that someone would shout ‘I object’) and the Pack gave their ritual consent in a rousing chorus of approval that did not at all make Dean’s eyes water. Finally, the _Hiereus_ gave his blessing, and then Benny and Dean stripped naked. Normally, Dean didn’t have too many issues with nudity; he _was_ a werewolf, after all, but having so many eyes on him, was a little intimidating, so he shifted as fast as humanly—well, werewolfly—possible and Benny did the same.

Dean-wolf took a moment to admire his alpha. Ben-wolf was one big werewolf; huge and grey with shaggy fur, he towered over everyone in wolf form and Dean-wolf had to admit that he really liked that.

Dean-wolf had offered Ben-wolf his submission the first time they shifted together, but he did it again now for the onlooking Pack, relishing the feel of Ben-wolf’s teeth pressing gently against his throat. The Pack had mostly all stripped off and shifted themselves by this point, and they howled their joyous approval.

And that concluded the official ceremonies. Ben-wolf made his way down from the dais with Dean-wolf right behind him, and Sam-wolf following.

There was a lot of happy howling and joyful yipping as the wolves all sniffed and nuzzled and then played and ran. Dean-wolf sought out Millie-wolf and gave her a thorough tongue-bath, much to her chagrin.

They spent the afternoon playing and napping in wolf form and then Ben-wolf called for hunters, which made Dean-wolf’s ears prick up with interest, because whenever he’d been at a Full Moon Celebration in the past, the call for hunters had only been issued to alphas and betas, but Ben-wolf had issued it to everyone.

Ben-wolf approached Dean-wolf directly and titled his head, ears twitching; a direct invitation to Dean-wolf to join the hunt. Dean-wolf thought about it, but honestly, he was incredibly comfortable lying in the shade with Mille-wolf, Lisa-wolf and her pups and Zeke-wolf. 

_Maybe next time_ , he conveyed, and Ben-wolf whined a little, disappointed, but accepting.

Kevin-wolf yipped his approval. He was sleek and black, with powerful rippling muscles, and looked far more like an alpha in wolf form than he did in human form. In typical alpha fashion he was reluctant to part from his pregnant mate, but he clearly wanted to go and hunt and was obviously relieved that Dean-wolf would be staying back. Dean-wolf preened a little that Kevin-wolf saw him as a suitable protector for his pregnant mate.

Zeke-wolf, in contrast to his alpha, was white and very, very fluffy and he was remarkably good-natured about his alpha’s over-protectiveness, although there was a lot of eye-rolling from both him and Lisa-wolf once the alphas had gone.

Lisa-wolf’s alpha had been at the celebrations earlier, but he was a doctor and on afternoon shift at one of the hospitals in the city, so he’d already had to leave. Dean-wolf rolled over and stretched and then sighed when Millie-wolf pounced on his tail. He flicked it around, allowing her to play with it. Would Ben-wolf be overprotective of him when he was carrying their pups? Dean-wolf had a feeling he would be. And that he would probably find it annoying.

Garth-wolf approached with Bess-wolf and prostrated himself before the resting omegas, asking to be allowed to join them. Dean-wolf made room for him and allowed him to cuddle in close, with Dean-wolf on one side of him and Bess-wolf on the other.

Benny had told Dean Garth’s story and it was a sad one. The beta wolf had been raised in the foster care system and had never once been given to a _were_ family to raise. He’d grown up with little understanding of his _were_ nature and he’d been very touch-starved by the time he came to Benny’s attention as a skinny, nervy eighteen-year-old. Benny had taken him under his wing and he was slowly gaining confidence, but he still needed a lot of touch and physical reassurance.

The hunters returned a little after sunset with a couple of big deer and the Pack feasted in wolf form.

When the moon was high in the sky, they howled for the blessing of Luna, and then Garth-wolf, Bess-wolf and Lisa-wolf herded the pups into the large den near the Pack Alpha’s house so that they could keep an eye on them while they slept together in a huge puppy pile. Meanwhile, the rest of the adults went and ran, after which they broke into smaller groups or couples and went their separate ways.

Dean-wolf noted that quite a lot of the couples were having sex under Luna’s sky, but he and Benny decided to loop back, change into human form and spend a couple of hours making love in Benny’s big comfy bed, before Dean went down to the den and collected Millie. Millie-wolf was sleepy and didn’t want to change forms, so Dean carried her to his own bed and settled her on his chest.

When Dean awoke in the morning, he was sandwiched between his omega-daughter and his alpha, both of whom were snoring lightly. Dean scented deeply and sighed. This? Right here? Was pretty much perfect. 

\--

A week after the Harvest Moon Celebrations were over, Sam started college. Benny lent him an SRT8 Dodge Charger that belonged to the Pack so that Dean could keep the impala for running around town. Dean thought it was a plastic piece of crap, but Sam seemed to like it. Meanwhile, Benny and Dean took a step back from the restaurant. Garth and Bess were now running it and the Winchesters were simply renting them the venue. This, Dean knew, had been the original plan, but then Benny had met Dean and decided he wanted to get to know him and the Pack had been happy to indulge him. It wasn’t uncommon, Dean learned, for Benny to take a few weeks off of Pack Alpha duties here and there, and get back in the kitchen. He particularly liked the B&B because he was both a cook and a fisherman and he liked to talk fishing and bait almost as much as he liked to cook.

Jody, who was a highly competent deputy, told Dean quite shrewdly that having Benny out and about in the community from time to time was an effective management technique too. She called it _management by wandering around_ and said that being seen living as an ordinary member of the Pack made Benny approachable and gave him a good understanding of the Pack’s needs and concerns too.

Now though, Benny had to refocus on his duties as Pack Alpha and Dean had to start becoming familiar with the role of the Pack Alpha-mate. Not that he _was_ Pack Alpha-mate yet, but Benny wanted him to ease into the role.

One of the first things he learned was that not everyone was happy with his new role in Benny’s life and one of the unhappiest was the beta-wolf Bela who had been doing a lot of the duties usually done by the Pack Alpha-mate.

It was nothing he could easily point at and call out as deliberately nasty, she was just abrupt with him and ‘forgot’ to tell him things, like meetings that should’ve been in his online diary, but weren’t. He’d learned that he diary wasn’t up to date from Jody when she called him to ask why he’d missed his scheduled meeting with the school board. Bela had been dismissive when he’d asked her about it, had said she’d thought Benny would’ve seen to it that Dean had his own diary. 

Dean growled low in his throat. “I _do_ have my own diary,” he said. “You’re supposed to tell me anything I need to put in it.”

Bela’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you growl at me! You’re an _omega;_ you’re below me in the Pack hierarchy.”

And that? Really pissed off Dean’s wolf and it was pure instinct that had him backing Bela against the wall and snarling until she bared her neck with a whine.

When Dean backed off, Bela summoned a glare and then stalked to her desk. She clicked the diary icon on her desktop and gestured Dean into her chair with a haughty expression.

“All yours,” she said.

Dean looked up at her with a frown and Bela sniffed. “I can see why he likes you, on a personal level. On a political level, however, you are a disaster and I won’t be a part of that.”

She strode out of the office, leaving Dean staring uncertainly after her.

Ah shit. Had he fucked up? Bela had been acting as de-facto Pack Alpha-mate for a long time. She didn’t fill the role as completely as Dean eventually would, but she’d been running the official household, hosting Pack events and liaising with Pack members and human officials on matters regarding Pack children and doing a good job apparently. And now Dean had pissed her off.

Dean ran a hand through his hair, picked up the desk phone and called Jody, explaining to Benny’s deputy that he’d just unleashed his wolf with Bela and she’d walked out.

Jody sighed. “I thought that might happen.”

Dean’s eyebrows lifted. “You did?”

“She’s had a crush on Benny for years. It was never gonna happen though. For a start, she’s a beta and Benny was never gonna go for a beta. Secondly, she’s not his type anyway; too hoity-toity. And thirdly, she’s not strong enough for him.”

“But?” Dean said, because he could definitely hear a _but_ in Jody’s tone.

Jody sighed. “But, she was good at her job. Well. Parts of it anyway.”

“Don’t tell me, the parts that involved socializing with a bunch of hoity-toity types.”

Jody snorted. “She’s a very accomplished hostess and event organizer.”

Dean huffed out a laugh. “Whereas those things are not my strong suit. Jody…couldn’t we just make a new role for her? Like…call her the Pack Event Co-Ordinator or something?”

Jody hmmmed. “She won’t be by the Pack Alpha’s side at events though, you will be.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Man, I hate all this ‘politics stuff’,” he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “Does it really matter if she won’t be at the Pack Alpha’s side?” he said finally. “She can still attend as a ‘senior pack official’, or something, so she’ll be off the hook as far as the boring part of the liaising is concerned and she can schmooze and network to her little socialite’s heart’s content.”

Jody outright laughed at that. “You might be on to something, Dean. For someone who claims to hate the ‘politics stuff’ you’re pretty good at it. I’ll run your idea past Benny,” she paused. “I take it you’re happy to run the Official Household?”

“Yeah. And the Pup welfare stuff. Any welfare stuff, actually. If this is gonna be my Pack then I’m gonna have everyone’s back. No one’s getting hurt or fucked over on my watch,” he wrinkled his nose. “Not even Bela. I know it sucks for her that I’m taking over her position, but I want her to be happy too.”

“You’re a good man, Dean,” Jody said, and the praise warmed Dean’s soul.

Next, Dean called Charlie and had her come over and transfer all Bela’s files from her computer onto his, and reset all the passwords. He spent the rest of the afternoon going through his calendar, dividing responsibilities into his and Bela’s and making notes about some changes he’d like to make to his role, once he and Benny mated. He made some phone calls, sent some emails and set up some appointments.

When three o’clock came around, Dean shut down his computer, packed up his papers, and drove down to the school to collect Millie. Sam was home from college, working hard at the kitchen table and he smelled happy.

Dean made Mille a snack and brewed a coffee for him and Sam and then sat down beside his brother, with Millie munching away happily on his other side.

“Thanks,” Sam cradled his coffee, blowing on it before taking a sip.

“How’s it all going?” Dean asked.

And then listened contentedly while he brother waxed lyrical about his classes and his professors and this amazing omega-woman he’d met called Jess.

“She’s unaffiliated,” Sam said. “From LA,” he wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like you were right about California. Doesn’t seem like it’s a great place for omegas. There’s not a lot of support in place.”

Dean frowned. “I thought you were seeing Eileen?”

Sam shrugged. “I mean, we’ve hung out. But, uh, I’m a young alpha-male, Dean. I’m--”

Dean cut him off. “If you say you’re sowing your wild oats, I swear to Luna I will deck you.”

Sam looked hurt. “I’m too young to settle down. I don’t know what I truly want in a mate yet. Trust me, there will be no,” he glanced at Millie. “Heat you-know-what.”

“Better not be,” Dean said gruffly.

Sam gulped at his coffee. “Anyway,” he said. “I was kinda thinking…when you and Benny mate, you’ll be moving into the official residence and I don’t want to.”

Dean frowned and his heart stuttered just a little. “Why not?”

Sam looked up at Dean, his eyes wide and imploring. “I want you guys to have your space. You don’t need your little brother tagging along when you’re newly mated. Besides, if you move in with Benny, I get this place to myself and I thought maybe I could open it up to other students,” his lips thinned. “There are people…wolves and humans…living in shitholes because they can’t afford better. I know what it’s like to be poor. We never lost the house, thank Luna, but I remember there not being enough food sometimes when I was a kid. I remember the electricity getting shut off,” Sam shrugged. “I wanna help, if I can. And Dean…I can help. We’ve got the room.”

Dean’s chest suddenly felt too small for his heart. Sam wanted to help people, of course he did. Besides, if there were college-aged _weres_ doing it tough this close to the NOLA Packlands, then it was Dean’s job to know about them and to see what he could do to help. Sammy’s idea seemed like a good start. 

“Okay,” he nodded. “I’m on board. I’ll talk to Benny too, see if there’s anything we can do to help out the _weres_. Scholarships or something.”

“Really?” Sam’s smile lit up the room. “That’s awesome!”

“No promises on that last part, but I think offering low rent housing to students here is a great idea.” 

Before Sam could reply to that, Dean’s cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and picked up with a smile.

“Hey Benny.”

“Hey _Cher_. Where you at?”

“My place. With Millie and Sammy.”

Benny sighed, deep and tired-sounding. “Been a hades of a day,” he said. “I’ve had Bela in my office all afternoon. Jody too.”

Dean’s stomach flip-flopped.

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Why are you sorry?”

Dean drew breath, ready to apologize for being a fuck up and causing a problem with Bela, but he paused for long enough to pay attention to his wolf, who was urging extreme caution. Dean replayed Benny’s question in his head and this time he caught the warning tone. Right. No talking smack about himself. Or else. Dean swallowed.

“My wolf,” he said carefully, “may have tried to throw down with Bela. I assume she came to you to complain?”

“That she did,” Benny drawled. “But then hot on her heels, Jody came along with some additional details. She also outlined some provisional plans that you and she had made for splitting the Pack Alpha-mate job in two. Bela liked those plans, _Cher_ , and Jody said they were all your ideas, so I’m guessing you like those plans too.”

“Yeah. And I got some other suggestions for my role that I wanna run past you at some stage too, but that can wait. You wanna join us for supper?”

“I would love to,” Benny said, but Dean could hear the regret in his tone, “only I have too much to catch up on.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “That’s cool. So I’ll see you Friday night?”

“You can count on it,” Benny promised.

\--

On Friday morning, Dean dropped Millie off at school and then went to the Barataria Clinic for Omega Health. There were a handful of very obviously pregnant omega-women in the clinic and one omega-male teen who smelled scared. Everyone looked up at Dean when he walked in and he tried his best to smile like he was some kind of community leader, but the truth was, he was kind of scared himself.

“Dean Winchester,” he said to the omega-woman behind the counter; Becky Rosen, according to her nametag. “I’m her to see Doctor Barnes.”

Becky’s eyes went improbably wide. “Yes Mr Winchester,” she said. “Just take a seat. The doctor will call you when she’s ready.”

Dean went and sat down on a comfortable black leather chair, next to the scared-smelling O-boy.

“Hey,” he said to him with a nod, getting his cell phone out of his jacket pocket to check his messages, maybe play some Ballz.

The kid’s scent got even more scared. Dean glanced up at him and the kid’s face was ashen, his eyes like Bambi’s in the headlights. 

“You okay?” Dean said.

The kid shook his head slowly.

Dean took a subtle sniff and noticed faint traces of heat-scent; just finished if he had to guess.

Dean leaned forward and said softly. “Just finished your first heat, huh? Here for the routine check-up?”

The kid nodded. 

Dean smiled and he knew there traces of bitterness in the smile. “It’s uh, a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

The kid nodded again.

“My family,” Dean told him, “it’s been alpha-men, omega-women right down the line, with a few surprise betas thrown in here and there. No-one was prepared for _me_ ,” the kid’s scent was calmer now, but that just meant Dean could scent the underlying sourness—something he understood all too well. So he continued.

“We lost my mama when I was four. And my papa…the only type of boy he knew how to raise was an A-boy. So that’s how he raised me. As far as role models go, I didn’t know any omega-males and the way Hollywood portrays us…that is _so_ not me,” he shook his head. “I mean, I _knew_ I was an O-boy, but” Dean shrugged,” I had no clue what that even meant. That first heat was…” he trailed off, not sure how to put it into polite words.

“A complete mindfuck,” the kid said resentfully.

Dean laughed out loud. “Yeah,” he agreed. “What’s your name, kid?”

The kid’s eyes slid across to his. “Michael,” he said.

Dean stuck his hand out. “Nice to meet you, Michael. I’m Dean.”

“I know,” Michael said. “I heard about the Courting Ceremony. I couldn’t go to the Harvest Moon Festival this year, because I was _confined_ ,” he said the last word harshly. “Mama’s confined right now, which is why I’m here by myself.”

Dean made a sympathetic face and endeavoured to look encouraging.

“My family’s the same as yours,” Michael continued after a brief pause. “Almost all O-girls and A-boys. I got three older brothers, all alphas. I got two younger sisters, both omegas and I got a younger brother who’s a beta. _Nobody_ knows what to do with O-boys. There’s too few of us and the stereotypes are too strongly believed,” Michael seemed to be on a roll now. “You know, ever since my heat, people look at me differently. Like, I’m _thirteen_ for Luna’s sake and grown-up alphas stare at my ass like it’s a tasty snack. They yell across the street that they’ve got a nice big knot for me. It’s _gross_.” 

Everyone had obviously been listening in if the chorus of agreement from the omega-women that followed was any indication.

Michael’s scent had become a lot calmer, so Dean subtly switched the conversation to what sort of things Michael enjoyed doing and he encouraged him to continue pursuing his interests, no matter what bigots may tell him.

People came and went, including Michael, and eventually Dean’s name was called by a seriously hot beta-woman. Dean couldn’t quite stop himself from giving her a subtle once over, but she was doing the same to him, so he figured it was okay.

“Well,” she said when they were seated in her consulting room. “Nice to meet you, Dean. I’m Pam.”

Dean shook her hand. “Nice to meet you too.”

“So you’re planning to mate our Pack Alpha?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Looks like.”

“Your previous practitioner has transferred your medical files to me, per your authorization,” Pam said. “So I’ve got the basics. I just have a few more questions for you, to clarify a few details.”

Dean settled in his seat and looked at her expectantly.

“According to your file, you had your first heat in January, having just turned thirteen?”

Dean nodded. “Yep. Happy birthday to me.”

“And were they regular after that?”

Dean confirmed that they were, every January and July, like clockwork, except for one, when he was nearly eighteen, which came two weeks early.

Pam asked him how he usually managed his heats and Dean rubbed the back of his neck.

“Confinement and toys,” he said gruffly, eyes on the desk.

There was a long pause and Dean figured that Pam was doing the math, because she said, “And the one that came early?”

Dean shook his head.

“No toys that time?”

Dean grimaced. “Not unless you count me,” he said harshly. “Because that’s what those alphas seemed to think I was.”

Pam made a noise, something between anger and sorrow, but Dean couldn’t look at her.

“Dean?” she said. “There’s nothing in your medical file about…”

She stopped. Started again. “Did you seek medical attention…afterwards? Maybe from a different clinic than you would usually go to?”

Dean shook his head. “Took a long hot shower, then went home and pretended nothing happened.”

He was half expecting her to tell him off, so when she told him that that was a common reaction, it startled him into making eye contact.

“I practised in Illinois before I moved here. I know what it’s like to live away from the Packlands and be unaffiliated. I know the prejudice you faced.”

Dean laughed; an ugly sound. “No offence Doc, but you’re a beta, you don’t _know_ shit.”

Pam conceded with a nod of her head. “Poor choice of words, maybe, but I’ve certainly _seen_ the way omegas are often treated out there in the big wide world,” she paused again. “The file says that you presented for prenatal care when you were twelve weeks pregnant.”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, well. Sammy noticed that my scent had changed, bugged me into going to the doctor. He was right. What happened…it wasn’t the pup’s fault.”

Dean could see the questions forming in Pam’s eyes and knew that she was trying to find a delicate way to ask him about his relationship with Millie.

“Look,” he said, “After it happened, my instinct was to hide. To burrow down in my den and lick my wounds and just…” he trailed off with a shrug. “Once I knew she was there…she was _mine_ , you know? Nothing to do with them. So yeah. I wasn’t ready for a pup, it isn’t a _choice_ I would’ve made, but I never really considered trying to get rid of her. Besides, you know how hard it is for an omega to get an abortion without the written approval of the alpha-sire. I already had a pretty thick ORB file; I didn’t need more attention on me,” he paused and met Pam’s eyes. “I love Millie with all my heart and soul. She’s mine and she’s amazing.”

Pam nodded. “I have a few more difficult questions. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get a grasp on your history so I can give you appropriate care and advice,” she waited for Dean’s reluctant acceptance and then said, “You gave birth to two pups, Millie and a stillborn alpha-female.”

It’s not a question, but Dean nods anyway. “Was that my fault?” he asked. “If I’d got medical care earlier, would she have survived?”

Pam regarded him seriously for a moment. “It’s difficult to say. This was obviously a traumatic pregnancy and alpha fetuses generally aren’t as tough as omegas. According to the file, the second twin hadn’t developed well. Dean… was the alpha that impregnated you male?”

Dean nodded.

“So both of your babies were cross-gender; female, when both sire and dam were male. That is _incredibly_ rare and only increases the complication of the pregnancy. Even with the best care.”

Dean’s face fell. “So it was my fault?”

Pam was skimming rapidly through his file. “Both you and your brother were single births,” she looked up at him. “Dean…omegas may be more likely to have multiple births, but some omegas are better suited to single births. If your omega-dam was, which seems likely given you and your brother, then there’s a good chance you are too. Maybe earlier care would’ve made a difference. Maybe better care would’ve made a difference. It’s hard to say. You did well in difficult circumstances and you shouldn’t blame yourself,” she cleared her throat. “However I will want to monitor your next pregnancy very closely. Let’s talk about that. Have you and your partner decided when you want to mate?”

Dean’s eyebrows rose of their own accord, both at her description of Benny as his _partner_ and at her assumption that he had any say in it. Which he did, obviously, but most people usually assumed that omegas did what they were told. Then again…Benny wasn’t most alphas and this Pack wasn’t most of America.

“When my next heat hits,” he told her. “So, uh, I want to stop taking the supps as soon as possible and also get some idea when my next heat is likely to happen.”

Pam hmmed as she examined his file. “It says here that you’re on Omegastrol ?”

Dean nodded. 

“And that you were first prescribed it six months after Millie’s birth?”

Dean nodded again.

“And I assume you’ve been taking it ever since, without a break?”

“Yeah. I know it’s not good for you to be on it that long, but our living situation wasn’t ideal for having a heat. Now that we’re better placed, I was planning to come off it anyway. So, uh, if I stop taking the supps today, how long do you think until I go into heat?”

Pam shrugged. “It’s different for everyone. Could be two weeks, could be two years. And you need to be prepared; your first post-supps heat could be longer or shorter than usual and you might not go a full six months before the next one. Coming off supps can send everything haywire for a while,” she paused and Dean nodded his understanding. She continued, “What I’d like to do here today is take a urine and blood sample and run some tests, and then I’ll give you a physical exam, just to make sure everything’s healthy and in proper working order. Is that okay with you?”

Dean scrunched his nose, but nodded. This was going to be the exact opposite of fun.

\--

To Dean’s relief, all his plumbing was in proper working order and he went away with instructions to stop taking his suppressants and to call on Monday for his test results.

Sam was out most of the weekend. Between Ruby, Eileen and Jess and some alpha-male called Brady who he’d met at college, he seemed to have developed an active social life. Dean was happy for him. His brother deserved some normality.

Dean and Millie spent the weekend at Benny’s and Dean told the alpha about Sam’s plans to open their house up to college students at an affordable price. He also mentioned that Sam had said there were _weres_ at UNO from out of state who were doing it tough.

“And I was thinking,” Dean said. “That maybe I could get involved? Set something up for college age _weres_ coming from out of state?”

Benny frowned. “UNO’s got a _Lycan_ Society. In theory they should be the first port of call for any struggling _weres_ ,” he frowned. “Okay. As a first step, you could ask Sam to quietly check out the Lycan Society; see how it’s travelling. See if it’s having any internal problem; see if it’s having any issues with the college authorities, that sort of thing. Then maybe we get you involved. ”

Dean nodded and said that he’d talk to Sam about it and they spent the rest of the weekend running in wolf form or out on Benny’s boat; fishing, exploring the bayou and gator spotting. Millie was fascinated by the alligators, squealing and clapping her hands whenever Benny pointed one out to her. Benny was horrified to learn that neither Dean nor Millie could swim and mandated swimming lessons for the both of them. The Pack Alpha residence had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and Benny gave Dean and Millie their first swimming lesson Sunday afternoon.

The next couple of weeks passed in much the same way. Dean and Millie split their time between their house and Benny’s. Millie went to school, Dean continued to learn his new job, finally meeting with the School Board and getting their report on how _were_ students were doing academically and socially, any special challenges they were facing and what the Pack could do to better help.

Sam brought Jess home to meet him and Dean’s first thought was that she was way out of his brother’s league. A statuesque blonde, Jess was assertive enough that at first glance most people would assume beta, but as with all _weres_ , her scent gave her away.

Jess had been helping Sam suss out the college’s _Lycan_ Society and Sam grimaced as he explained to Dean that it was a bit of a mess.

“Got a bunch of alpha-males in charge; no Pack members, all unaffiliated, some from here, but most from out of state, all spouting ‘traditionalist’ crap about every _were_ needing to ‘know their place in the hierarchy’. They were all over me ‘til they realized I was a progressive and then they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”

Jess spoke up.

“I went in a little while after Sam, but he stayed around, lurking, which was just as well,” her face was pinched with anger. “According to the Alpha in charge, I shouldn’t even be in college, I should be waiting at home, ass up, for my alpha to come give me his knot. When I said I didn’t have an alpha,” Jess shuddered. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing Sam was waiting right outside.”

Dean could feel his blood boiling. “Okay. Leave it with me. I’ll talk to Benny and we’ll get that dealt with. That sort of thing’s not gonna fly here.”

A short phone call later and Dean didn’t envy any of the alphas currently swanning around thinking they were in charge of UNO’s Lycan Society. They were about to get a visit from a wrathful Pack Alpha, which, Dean mused, would be a good lesson for them in how a healthy Pack hierarchy actually worked.

The next day, Dean’s stomach was unsettled, which he put down to wondering how Benny was getting on with the Lycan Society. He still hadn’t heard anything when it was time to go and pick Millie up. He packed his stuff away slowly and then drove over to the school, parking in his usual spot and then going to sit with Lisa while they waited for the pups to come out.

“Omma, omma!” Millie was running toward him with a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. “I got a gold star for my han’writing!”

Dean grinned and squatted down in front of her. “That’s great, baby. Let me see?”

She proudly handed him the sheet of paper, with her careful, precise handwriting carefully displayed, along with a big gold star.

“Great job, sweetheart,” he said.

And then he frowned. What was that scent? Rotten eggs and a just-struck match…coming from somewhere behind him. Dean’s blood ran cold and he turned and stood in one fluid movement, pushing his daughter behind him and growling.

“Hello again, Dean,” said the thin, nasally voice that haunted most of Dean’s nightmares. “Is that any way to greet your Alpha?”


	6. I had a feeling that I belonged

_So remember we were driving, driving in your car  
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk  
City lights lay out before us  
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder  
I had a feeling that I belonged  
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone_

_\--_

Every muscle in Dean’s body was ready to fight. Son of a bitch. What in Luna’s name was Alastair doing here?

“I take it that is my omega-daughter?” Alastair said.

His stance was casual, his hands in his pockets, and he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Dean licked his lips and Alastair, the sick fuck, tracked the movement with intent.

“Lisa?” Dean said. “Call Benny. Get him here now.”

Lisa got her cell phone out and scrolled for Benny’s number.

Alastair smiled thinly. “Yes, Lisa. Do that. Tell him Alastair White is here to take what’s his. In the meantime, I want to meet my daughter. Come here girl.”

His voice lashed out with Alpha command and Dean felt Millie react and then stop herself, just as he’d taught her.

“Omma?” she said, her tone high and frightened.

“You stay here with me, sweetheart,” he said.

“Okay, Omma.”

Alastair glared. “I can see I’ve got some serious retraining on my hands. The girl needs to be taught her place. And you need to be reminded of yours, Dean. Head down, ass up, taking my knot like a good little bitch.”

“Go to hades, Alastair,” Dean said, his voice shaking with fury.

Alastair sneered. “That’s not what you said last time. You begged for my cock like the omega slut you are.”

He went on to describe in painstaking detail, the way he and Gordon had violated Dean, while Kubrick and Creedy stood guard. Dean didn’t need to hear it and he did his best to tune out Alastair’s rambling. Thankfully, he’d been pretty out of it due to heat desperation and what he mostly remembered of the prolonged assault was the sick horror he’d felt each time he came out of the heat fugue and found himself knotted to Alastair.

The roar of a large engine shattered the charged air as Benny’s truck barrelled down the road at speed and squealed to a stop beside them.

Benny got out and stood before Dean. He took Dean’s face in his hands and Dean turned his head slightly, scenting his alpha.

“You’re alright, _Cher_ ,” Benny said. “I’ve got you.”

Benny turned to face Alastair. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said flatly.

“Alastair White, alpha-sire of the girl there. Dean is my omega, ran away before I could mate him.”

“Bullshit,” Dean said. “You knew exactly where I lived for five years and you never bothered to stake a claim, not on me, not on my daughter. Why now?”

Alastair’s smile was thin and cruel. “Because now you’re finally worth something,” his eyes flicked to Benny. “At least, you’re worth something to _him_.”

Before Dean could respond, Benny spoke up. “Well,” he said, “it seems we need to have some discussions, but here, outside the school, is not the place,” he turned to face Dean and winked at him. “Dean, you and Millie get in my car.”

Dean decided to follow Benny’s lead, strapping Millie into the car seat that Benny had got specially for her, and then climbing into the back seat beside her, because as much as he wanted to be by Benny’s side right now, he needed to be able to hold his daughter more.

“Alastair, you follow us,” Benny ordered as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Thanks for the call Lisa.”

The engine started and Benny took off, heading along the Boulevard toward the bridge.

“What’s the plan?” Dean asked.

Benny met his eyes in the rear view mirror. “Firstly, we move this _discussion_ ,” Benny growled the world, “to Packlands.”

Dean nodded. He’d figured that part out for himself.

“We going to the house?”

Benny nodded. “Yeah. And I called Sam, Jody and Victor Henricksen on the way over to meet us there.”

That made sense. Sam was still technically his alpha-guardian, Jody was the Pack Deputy and Victor was the NOLA Pack’s Sherriff. Dean had only met him once, but he’d seemed like a decent guy. Benny didn’t socialize with Victor, because he wanted there to be a clear separation between the Pack’s executive and its law enforcement branch. In practice, Benny was more like a king than a president, but he strove to keep things as democratic as possible.

“Omma?” Millie said.

“Yes, baby?”

“I don’t like that alpha. He smells bad. And he makes you smell sad and scared.”

Dean squeezed his daughter tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“You smell a bit better now.” Millie burrowed herself against Dean’s chest. “Omma?” she paused. “Was that the alpha that put me in your tummy?” 

Dean’s heart lurched to a stop and every muscle in his body seized up. He knew he’d have to have this conversation with his daughter someday, but he wasn’t ready for it yet. He’d decided a long time ago that he wasn’t going to lie to his daughter, but he wasn’t going to tell her the whole truth either. Now that he was faced with the moment he’d been dreading, he found that he couldn’t speak, so he simply nodded.

He was in no way prepared for Millie to burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

“Millie, baby, there is nothing for you to be sorry about it.”

Dean glanced at the rear view mirror and met Benny’s eyes, which were ringed with alpha-red. He smelled of tightly-controlled fury and his lengthened nails were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.

“Nobody’s angry with you,” Dean told Millie, hugging her hard. “We all love you so much. We just don’t like the smelly alpha because he was mean to me. But that’s not your fault. You’re mine. My precious baby O-girl and I love you so, so much.”

By the time they reached the Pack Alpha’s official residence, Millie had cried herself to sleep. Benny was, of course, waved right through by the guard house, but Alastair was stopped, to be searched and questioned, and generally delayed for long enough to allow Dean and Benny to get organized.

They split up at the door of the residence, Benny heading straight for the Pack Boardroom and Dean heading for the Pack Alpha’s private apartment to put Millie to bed. He asked Jess (who’d come in with Sam) and Donna (who’d come in with Jody) to sit with her, so she’d see some familiar faces when she woke up and Benny also sent two of his security staff to watch the door into the private suite, so Dean could relax, reassured of her safety.

From the private suite, Dean went and met Benny and the others in the boardroom. He was surprised to see Charlie there, Benny hadn’t mentioned her earlier. She hurried to his side the moment she saw him and threw her arms around him.

“I’ve got your back,” she said fiercely. “Benny had me digging up whatever I could on Alastair and he and Victor are going through it all right now.”

Dean kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Red.”

She squeezed his waist and then let go and slipped out of the room.

She was replaced by Sam, and apparently it was Hug Dean Winchester Day, because Sammy threw his arms around him too, burying his nose in Dean’s neck like he was still a pup.

“Are you okay? How’s Millie?”

“We’re both fine,” Dean reassured him.

“Dean?” Benny called. “Come sit. You too Sam.”

There were a lot of papers strewn about on the board table.

“This is everything we’ve got on Alastair. Start reading. I wanna know exactly what his game is.”

Dean snorted. “Alastair always wants the same thing: power. He’s not interested in me and Millie, not really. He could’ve come for us any time in the last five years, but he waited until I was being courted by a Pack Alpha to show any interest.”

“The White family are a powerful _were_ family in Kansas,” Victor said. “There’s no Pack in Kansas, though, so the Whites try to affiliate themselves with other Packs. They’ve had the most success with the Michigan Pack, which is a fairly human-influenced Pack in terms of their attitudes to ‘traditional’ hierarchies.”

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Sam suddenly exploded.

Everyone looked at him and he colored slightly and then held up what appeared to be a printout of a family tree.

“Ruby’s Aunt Lillith,” he said. “Before she married Nick and became a Pellegrino, she was Lillith White. Alastair’s her cousin. I’m guessing word of you being courted by Benny got back to Alastair through Lillith and the sick son-of-a-bitch saw an opportunity.”

Dean barely skimmed the papers that the others were studying so thoroughly; he just couldn’t stomach it. His tummy was still feeling slightly off and he was starting to get a headache. Too much stress, that’s what it was, and he wasn’t going to add to it by reading up on how well Alastair had done for himself; how being a pup-siring rapist hadn’t stigmatized him or limited his opportunities in any way. How his family’s money and influence had ensured a great and successful future for him. 

When security announced that Alastair White and Nick Pellegrino were here requesting an audience with the Pack Alpha, no-one was surprised that Alastair had called for back-up, and no one was surprised by who was providing it.

The pair strode in, oozing alpha confidence, and took a seat at the board table, across from Benny, Jody, Victor, Dean and Sam.

Alastair leered at Dean and Nick peered at him like he was some kind of interesting specimen and Benny…didn’t growl, not exactly, the air just sort of…got ominous around him. It was impressive really, and it made Alastair turn a little pale.

“State your piece,” Benny said mildly.

Alastair raised his chin. “I’m here to claim, the Omega Dean Winchester and the daughter I sired off him.”

Fury ran through Dean’s veins at the way Alastair dismissed him as nothing more than a breeding bitch.

Benny nodded thoughtfully. “Dean is a member of my Pack and I am currently Courting him. According to Pack Law, Dean would need to officially reject my Courtship and then officially accept your claim.”

“Nonsense,” Alastair interrupted. “He’s just an omega. His alpha-guardian needs to approve it, true, but I sired a pup off him, so I’m entitled to both him and the pup.”

Dean snorted and shook his head.

“Not according to Law in my Pack,” Benny said. “Of which Dean, Sam and Millie are all members.”

Alastair frowned fleetingly, but before he could offer any comment, Benny asked Dean if he’d like to reject Benny’s Courtship.

“Fuck no,” Dean said. “And I absolutely DO NOT accept this douchebag’s claim. He can go to Hades.”

Benny nodded. “Let the record state that Dean Winchester does not reject my Courtship and that he rejects the Claim of Alastair White,” Benny fixed his gaze on Alastair. “Was there anything else?”

Alastair glowered petulantly and then said, “I want the omega-girl.”

“For the record,” Benny intoned, “please state the full name of the ‘omega-girl’ you’re referring to.”

Alastair gaped at him. “You know which omega-girl. I saw her with you. Dean’s pup.”

Dean sighed. “You don’t even know her name. You want to take her away from everyone and everything she’s ever known and you didn’t even bother to learn her name before you came here. You don’t care about _Millie_ ,” Dean emphasized her name, “You just see her as a thing you’re entitled to own.”

Alastair shrugged. “I’m her alpha-sire. The law says that I _am_ entitled to her.”

“Not on these Packlands,” Benny said. “Millie’s omma has the authority to accept or reject any sire claim on her. And to even _issue_ a challenge to that, you’d have to _prove_ that you’d sired her.”

Alastair frowned. “My word is enough.”

Benny shook his head. “Not in my Pack, it’s not. Dean do you accept Alastair White’s claim on your omega-daughter Millie Winchester?”

“No way,” Dean exploded. “Never.”

“But I _am_ her alpha-sire!” Alastair argued.

“Then prove it and issue a challenge.”

“It’s fine, Al,” Nick said calmly. “We’ll just get a blood sample and do a sire test.”

“Right,” Alastair said. “Yes. Give me a blood sample to get tested.”

“Give me a court order first,” Dean snarled.

Alastair growled at him and then turned to Benny. “Well?”

Benny shrugged. “You heard the man.”

Pellegrino was looking at Benny with narrowed eyes. “I hope you know what you’re doing Lafitte. If you continue to thwart my cousin’s right to his omega-mate and his omega-daughter, you may find yourself challenged; and not just for the girl.”

“I’m not his mate,” Dean growled, but his words were drowned out by Benny throwing his head back and laughing.

“Oh I see,” he said. “You tried to take over the Michigan Pack and lost, so now you think you’ve found an excuse to try to take over mine. I suggest you read our Pack constitution, Pellegrino. Any challenge on me regarding Dean and Millie would be a personal challenge; Alastair against me. Winning it would not win you the Pack and nor would it win you Dean and Millie. Our Pack doesn’t work that way. And Alastair…you wouldn’t win, so I would think twice before handing me a legitimate opportunity to tear your throat out.”

Benny did that thing again, where the air around him seemed to vibrate and darken and Alastair shrank away from him.

Pellegrino, however, simply looked amused. “He’s allowed a second to fight you in his place,” he said and then the air around him began to darken and vibrate as well, as he demonstrated that he was just as old and powerful as Benny. “And I would be happy to fight you in his place. And who knows how your Pack constitution will stand up when you’re dead?”

Benny’s lip curled. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll just have to send a second in my place too then. If Alastair is stupid enough to issue a challenge. For now, I suggest you go away and think through your options.”

After they’d gone; surly, spluttering threats and escorted by security; Dean slumped down on the table, his head in his hands. His stomach was churning even worse than it had been and his head was aching something fierce. He’d done this. He’d brought all of this trauma down on Benny’s Pack. He could smell the guilt souring his scent.

Before he could voice an apology he was hit by the acrid stench of furious alpha. He glanced up at Benny in alarm and saw red-tinged eyes, elongated canines and claws. Benny was glaring at the door and clearly struggling not to shift. Dean was on his feet and taking his alpha in his arms before he’d even realized he’d decided to move.

“It’s okay,” he said, holding Benny close, so that his face was buried against Dean’s neck. “I’ve got you.”

Benny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again the red was gone. “My wolf wants to rip his Luna-damned throat out,” he growled. “But we have to be smart about this.”

Dean nodded.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Benny said. “This is a lot harder for you and yet here you are dealing with my emotional outburst.”

Dean shrugged. “That’s what partner’s do, Benny, I support you when you need it; you support me.” 

Benny nodded. “How can I support you now? What do you need?”

Dean smiled. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Benny was so close and looking at him so earnestly that Dean couldn’t help kissing him, just a brief, relatively chaste touch of lips against lips.

When he pulled back, Benny was smiling and when he turned to look at Sam his little brother practically had hearts in his eyes. Dean took a step back.

“And that’s enough of the chick flick moment. I’m gonna go check on Millie,” he glanced back at Benny. “You need me anymore?”

Benny shook his head. “We can make do without you, I’ll update you later. You go be with Millie for a while.”

When Sam got up to leave with Dean, Benny forestalled him. “Sam, I’m going to call Arthur Ketch, the Pack’s lawyer, and I’d appreciate you being in on that conversation.”

“Of course,” Sam sat back down.

\--

The private quarters of the Pack Alpha’s official residence were at some distance from the official business areas and as Dean strode down the corridor that separated the two sections, he nearly collided with Andrea coming out of one of the offices. Dean hadn’t even realized that she worked out of the official residence when she wasn’t working at his B&B.

He smiled, ready to offer a polite greeting, but the beta-woman scowled at him and Dean was taken aback by the hostility radiating from her.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself, Dean,” she spat, “bringing all this trouble down on our heads, all because you behaved like a typical omega slut!”

Dean’s jaw dropped.

“Benny and I dated for a while,” she continued. “Did you know that? Did he tell you? My family’s been part of this Pack for centuries. We’re _connected_. I would’ve made a far better Pack Alpha-mate than some blow-in omega slut like you and everybody knows it!”

She swept past him and was gone before he could even respond. The ache in his head and behind his eyes got stronger.

The hades of it was that she was right. He didn’t want her to be, but who was he kidding? His heat had been early sure, but every omega knew that a heat could hit early. He’d been told often enough not to go out when his heat was due. He was everything she said he was and more; he wasn’t worthy of Benny and everybody knew it. The best thing he could do, for Benny, for the Pack he’d come to love, was to move as far away as possible, but even the thought of doing that gutted him.

The security betas on the door into the private suite practically recoiled when Dean approached and Dean couldn’t blame them; the scent of a highly distressed omega was almost unbearable to stomach, even for betas who’s sense of smell wasn’t as strong as an omega’s or an alpha’s.

Charlie had joined Donna and Jess and the omega-women both gasped as soon as he walked into the living area.

“What’s wrong?” Donna said. “What am I missing?”

“Is Millie still asleep?” Dean asked as he approached the sofa where the women were sitting.

Charlie nodded. “Like a log,” she got to her feet and drew him in for a hug. “Dean…what’s wrong?”

“Me,” Dean confessed. “I did this. I brought this down on you all. I should…I should leave.”

“The heck you did,” Donna said indignantly. “And the heck you should. Just because that Alastair’s an alpha werewolf doesn’t give him a free pass where consent is concerned. You’re not responsible for what he did then and you’re not responsible for what he’s doing now. You hear me, Dean?”

Dean sat down beside Charlie. Yeah, he heard Donna, but so what? Donna, Luna-bless her, was a human with no real comprehension of werewolf biology.

“Donna’s right,” Charlie said. “None of this is your fault. And you’re ours now; we’re not letting you go.”

Dean managed a sad, bitter smile. “Charlie…I didn’t say no. I begged for it. I--”

“No!” Charlie interrupted. “Stop it. Heat is the biological equivalent of a roofie; we’re not in control during our heats and that’s why we submit. But whatever they teach you out there in the human world, it’s bullshit, because Alphas should never behave like Alastair did. He was the one in the wrong. We learn how it _should_ be in the Packlands. We have to give consent to an alpha _before_ we go into heat, when real consent is still possible, or it doesn’t count.”

Dean shook his head. “That’s all nice and PC, but it doesn’t change the biological facts. It’s like my alpha-sire used to say, if you leave a car downtown, with the doors open and the keys in the ignition, don’t be surprised when it gets stolen.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised when Charlie smacked him upside the head.

“Uh,” Jess got to her feet. “I’m gonna make a pot of coffee. Donna? Can you give me a hand?”

The two of them scurried from the room and Dean took one look at Charlie’s thunderous face and swallowed.

“Firstly,” she said. “Omegas are not objects. Secondly, that argument is so much bullshit I don’t even know where to start. Taking something you shouldn’t take is always wrong and the one who does the taking is the one who needs to be blamed and held to account. Omegas should be able to live our lives, free and unmolested. We shouldn’t have to constantly police where we go and what we do to ensure we’re not victimized. Alphas who don’t respect that need to be held to account; the blame for an alpha’s behavior should never fall on us.”

Dean picked at some imaginary lint on his jeans.

“That’s not the way the world works, though,” he said. “And we’re the ones who get hurt.”

Charlie sighed. “Still, we’re not the ones who need to change. They are. And they won’t volunteer to change out of the goodness of their hearts; we have to push for it. So don’t try to tell me that fighting for our right to be treated and spoken to with dignity and respect and calling it out when we’re not is just ‘PC bullshit’.”

They sat in silence until Donna and Jess came back with a tray of coffee and cookies and it wasn’t until Dean had drunk half a cup of chicory-flavored café au lait that he spoke again.

“Andrea was right, though, she’d have made a better Pack Alpha-mate than me.”

Charlie very nearly choked on her coffee and Donna frowned.

“Andrea?” Donna said. “Isn’t she a beta?”

Charlie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yeah,” she said. “She and Benny dated a little back when they were both a lot younger, but, uh, it was more of a friendship thing on Benny’s part. He was never, ever going to mate her and he made that more than obvious by all accounts. It was before my time, but, uh, everyone knows that Andrea’s been carrying a torch. Whatever she said to you, Dean, it’s just her jealousy talking.”

Dean shook his head. “Okay, so if not Andrea, then an omega who grew up in the Pack. Someone who knows Pack ways. I’m not good enough for him, Charlie. I’m 90% crap…a worthless, uneducated single whelp-parent,” Dean blinked back tears. “When I look in the mirror, I can’t stand the person I see, because I’m poison, Charlie. I bring pain and suffering down on everyone who gets close to me.”

Dean scented Benny in the same moment that he realized the alpha was barrelling through the door and straight toward him and he staggered to his feet in the face of his alpha’s very obvious distress.

“Benny I’m…” he began, but Benny just shooshed him and took him in his arms.

“You are a good man, Dean Winchester,” he said. “You are meant to be mine and I will never believe otherwise; but we clearly need to work on your self-esteem.”

Dean blinked back tears again. Luna, his emotions were all over the frigging place right now.

“How’s Millie?” Benny asked.

“Still sleeping.”

“Let’s go check on her.”

Together Dean and Benny went and peered in at Dean’s sleeping daughter and Dean breathed in her scent and told himself that at least he’d done one good thing in his life.

“C’mon,” Benny said eventually and led Dean back into the living room.

“Charlie, can you keep an eye on Millie for a little while? It’s been a rough day. I think Dean and I need to spend some quality one-on-one, alpha and omega time together; soothe our wolves.”

“Sure,” Charlie said.

“That okay with you, _Cher_?” Benny asked Dean.

Dean said that it was and the two of them made their way out of the Pack Alpha’s apartment, down the corridor, to what Dean assumed was one of the residence’s guest suites.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Dean sagged, comfort and calm surging through him.

“What is that?” he managed as Benny pulled him over to a large, comfortable looking sofa strewn with cushions and throw rugs.

“Plug-in Pheromones, _Cher_ ,” Benny said. “This is our Heat Suite. Seemed like a nice quiet, scent-contained place for you and I to reconnect.”

He tugged Dean down onto the sofa and Dean went easily, curling himself on his side next to Benny, his knees drawn up and his head on Benny’s chest as he allowed himself to be thoroughly cuddled by his alpha.

A moment later, Benny’s hand was combing through his hair and gently massaging his scalp.

Dean almost purred. “Feels good,” he said. “I’ve had a headache all day.”

Benny’s hand stilled for a moment and then moved to his neck, massaging the area around his scent glands. The moan that left Dean’s throat was sinful. “Oh Luna, that feels good,” he groaned.

“Dean?”

“Mmm?” Dean was pretty sure he was about to start drooling on Benny’s shirt.

“I want you to be my mate. When your heat hits I want to make you mine. You’ve already agreed to that, but I need you to be really clear right now. Is that still something that you want?”

It wasn’t fair of Benny to ask him serious questions while he was making Dean feel so amazing. Of course Dean wanted to be Benny’s. The question was whether or not Benny deserved to be saddled with a loser like Dean and the answer to that was _hades no_.

“You could do better than me,” Dean began, but Benny kissed him into silence.

“I want _you_ ,” Benny said when he pulled away. “I _like_ you. I like the way you look out for your family and friends; the way you sing to your daughter every night; the way your wolf runs and frolics; the way you love food with your whole being; the way you enjoy yourself in between the sheets. You’re funny, and kind, and tender and so, so strong. I _love_ you Dean Winchester. I couldn’t ask for a better mate and I hate that there are people in your life who’ve made you feel worthless.”

Dean squirmed at Benny’s words of praise and adoration, unable to accept them.

“And so now, Dean, I want Luna’s honest truth from you. Not what you think I want to hear, not some ridiculous notion you have of saving me from a bad choice, I want you to tell me honestly if you want me as much as I want you. If you don’t, that’s okay. I will never force anything on you, but I want you to tell me the truth.”

Dean shook his head. “Benny I’m not a good choice. You’ll be— _Ow_!”

Dean’s attempt to make Benny see reason was interrupted by Benny’s hand smacking down hard on his ass.

“You _are_ a good choice and you are _my_ choice. Am I yours? Am I good enough for _you_?”

“Of course you are. I’m the one who’s— _Ow_!”

Benny had a hard hand and Dean couldn’t deny that getting smacked by him hurt. But it felt good too; partly because the show of alpha dominance was turning him on and partly because he could feel it soothing his wolf.

Dean squirmed a little and groaned softly.

Benny chuckled and then hauled Dean over his lap.

“Tell me you’re a good man, Dean.”

Benny was resting his hand on Dean’s ass and Dean may not have been college educated, but he was ass up over Benny’s lap and he was smart enough to understand the implication. If he kept smack-talking himself, Benny was going to smack his ass, but good, just like he’d been threatening for weeks. 

Dean’s stomach squirmed in anticipation and he could feel himself getting slick. Luna help him but he really wanted Benny’s hand on his ass; wanted to be good for his alpha, wanted to submit; to give up control; even if it meant pain. He trusted Benny not to truly hurt him and he knew that the alpha would stop if he asked him to.

“Well?” Benny said.

Dean took a shaky breath. “I may need a little convincing,” he said.

“You sure?” Benny said and Dean could hear the arousal in his voice.

“Yeah.”

Benny sucked in air. “If you need me to stop…”

“I’ll tell you.”

Benny reached underneath Dean and unzipped his jeans before sliding both them and his briefs down over his ass.

Dean shivered and heat coursed through his veins.

Benny’s hand came down to rest on Dean’s ass and Dean nearly whined in anticipation. His cock had hardened and his channel was swollen and tingly. Luna’s blessing! He was so turned on right now.

Slowly, so painstakingly slowly that it was almost unbearable, Benny began to rub his hand across Dean’s ass, first one cheek, then the other, then right over the center.

“You ready, _Cher_?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

Benny lifted his hand and then smacked it down hard; one cheek; the other cheek; center, and Dean groaned as a strange mix of pain and pleasure surged through him.

“My good omega,” Benny praised, repeating the series of smacks. “You submit, beautifully.”

Another round of smacks and Dean’s ass began to feel hot and stingy, but damn it felt good.

“You’re a good man, aren’t you Dean?”

Benny reached down and began to play with his channel opening and Dean couldn’t help spreading his legs, wanting more. 

“Aren’t you?” Benny stopped playing and smacked his ass again and because he’d spread his legs, the smack landed right on his asshole and the pleasure/pain combination that lanced through Dean took him right to the brink of orgasm.

“Aren’t you?” Benny repeated.

“Yes! Oh fuck. Benny…do that again!”

Benny merely chuckled and went back to slapping his ass cheeks.

“You’re a worthy Pack Alpha-mate, aren’t you Dean?”

Benny’s hand hovered over his hole and Dean nodded fervently.

“Yes, Alpha, please.”

Benny smiled. “Tell me you’re worthy.”

“I’m worthy. Please Alpha.”

“Tell me you’re a good man.”

“I’m good, Benny. Gonna be so good for you. Please!”

Benny smacked his hand down right in the center of Dean’s asshole and he came hard, both his channel and his dick orgasming in sync.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned, lying limp and unresisting as Benny pulled off his shoes, socks, jeans and briefs and then hauled him up to sit straddling his Alpha’s lap.

Benny took Dean’s head in his hands and kissed him long and deep and Dean ground down against his alpha’s hard cock and realized that he was already ready to go again.

Fire surged through his veins and Dean pulled away and looked at Benny. The alpha’s eyes were tinged with red and he smelled extremely aroused.

Dean gulped in air and his own scent hit him.

“Aw fuck,” he said, his eyes widening. “I’m in heat.”

“Yeah,” Benny nodded. “All the upset of the day really messed with your pheromones; took me a while to figure it out.”

Dean snorted. “So that’s why you brought us to the Heat Suite.”

Benny ducked his head and looked somewhat chagrined. “No _Cher_. I just knew this suite would be well-stocked, comfortable and able to contain any distressed scents you may start putting out, what with everything that happened today,” he paused and then kissed Dean again, before pulling back. “I didn’t figure you were in heat until you told me you’d had a headache all day and then it helped when I massaged your scent glands. That told me that today’s stress had stopped your heat in its tracks, so I needed to get you into the right head space to allow the hormones to reassert themselves.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “So you basically spanked me back into heat?”

Benny grinned. “I enabled you to submit to me, which triggered all the right hormones and pheromones.”

Dean huffed and then he was hit with a wave of feverish arousal. He climbed off Benny’s lap and stripped off the rest of his clothes before smiling wickedly and turning and running for the bedroom.

With a roar, Benny was after him, his instinct to chase the fertile omega well and truly triggered.

Dean was fast though, a worthy mate, and only allowed his alpha to catch him when he could be tackled to the bed.

“Too many clothes, Benny,” Dean gasped and then turned onto his back and watched, impressed, as his alpha stripped with record speed before climbing back on top of him and pinning him to the bed.

The alpha rutted against him, groin to groin, and Dean tipped his head back, baring his throat.

“Soon,” Benny promised. He reached into the top drawer of the lamp table and pulled out a condom and a knot ring.

Dean pouted. “Want you to fuck me bare, alpha. Want you to knot me.”

Benny’s eyes darkened with lust and desire, but he shook his head.

“Ain’t what you gave consent for. You said we could mate, but we had to use a condom and a knot ring.”

Dean writhed beneath his alpha. “Changed my mind.”

Benny leaned down and kissed him thoroughly. “Next time, _Cher_. If you’re still of the same mind when you’re not in heat.”

Dean whined and wriggled seductively, earning himself a stern look from his alpha which only served to turn him on even more.

“Behave,” he said. “Or I’ll spank your ass again.”

Dean bit his bottom lip. “You do recall I came from that, right? Ain’t really a deterrent.”

Benny put on the condom and the knot ring and moved back, urging Dean to roll over and present, chest and forearms on the bed, head resting on his forearms, ass in the air, legs spread.

Dean’s channel clenched and released. “C’mon alpha,” he breathed. “Need you.”

Benny didn’t need to be told twice. A moment later Dean felt the head of Benny’s cock resting against his wet, swollen opening and then the alpha pushed in deep, fucking in to the hilt in one hard, fast shove. He took hold of Dean’s hips and pulled back, until Dean’s channel was only being held open by the head of Benny’s cock, and then he thrust home again, making Dean mewl as he took a rough hard dicking that brought him to the edge of orgasm within a few thrusts. He teetered on the brink, wanting a knot to make him spill over, but Benny was wearing a Luna-damned knot ring which meant it took longer for Dean to come. 

Sex with Benny was always mind-blowingly good, and Dean came hard, round after round, after round. But it wasn’t enough. His body craved alpha-sperm. It craved a knot. And he begged for it, unashamedly. But his alpha was strong and good and no matter how hot Dean’s blood boiled, no matter how desperately he whined and begged and pleaded, his alpha stuck to his guns.

At some point during the long hours of fucking, Benny had gotten his cell phone out and let his deputy, as well as Sam and Charlie, know that they would be indisposed for a few days.

He’d made them mac’n’cheese and he’d poured them several glasses of orange juice to drink.

He’d given Dean a sponge bath and he’d let him sleep, dozing beside him until, once again, the heat flared and Dean moaned and spread his legs and begged Benny to fuck him bare, to come inside him and knot him. _Please_.

“It’s just your biology talking, _Cher_ ,” Benny said as he fitted yet another condom and knot ring to his red chafed dick. “We already agreed no pups this heat. But I’ll bite you this round. That’ll ease the desperation some.”

Dean canted his hips and groaned in satisfaction when Benny sank into him. When Benny began to swivel his hips and as he thrusted, just as he would if he were going to knot Dean, Dean felt himself go lax as his body prepared for a knot that wouldn’t be coming. Instead, Benny reared back and paused.

“Please, Benny,” Dean gasped.

“Dean, will you be my mate?”

Dean had already agreed and really wasn’t in any fit state to disagree now, but it was nice that Benny was doing his best to make absolutely sure that Dean wanted this.

“Yes. Please.”

Benny sank his teeth into Dean’s neck, at the juncture where neck met shoulder, and Dean howled and came harder than he had since his heat began.

Benny was right about it helping too. His alpha’s saliva in his blood stream had a soothing effect and Dean was able to sleep for a few hours after that round. When he awoke again, he didn’t feel quite as desperate. _Were_ biology may have sucked ass for omegas, but wearing his alpha’s bite, being claimed by him, actually felt good. It didn’t feel like being _owned_ , it felt like being _wanted_. He and Benny were it now. For life. And Dean felt cherished.

Sex. Cuddling and tender words of praise. Sponge baths. Benny making hurried whispered phone calls. Eating and drinking. Rinse and repeat; in a seemingly never-ending cycle. At one point, Benny hauled Dean bodily out of bed and carried him to the hot tub in the bathroom, which soothed Dean’s aching muscles and eased his red and tender nether-regions too.

Dean’s throat was hoarse from begging. From crying out in ecstasy. From screaming like a wildcat.

He wolfed out at one point, but his alpha wasn’t having that. Benny refused to shift, knowing all too well that he wouldn’t be able to control his alpha-wolf as well in that form and besides, he’d never be able to put on a condom and a knot ring with claws instead of fingers, which may have been Dean- wolf’s sneaky point, in any event, no matter how much he barked and whined, his alpha stood firm, so Dean shift back to human and presented in that form, begging his alpha to take him. This time, Benny got out the lube and opened his ass, fucking him bare that way, which went some way to soothing the heat burning through his veins, but wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. 

Time blurred. Dean vaguely remembered a grand finale of desperation, of frenzied, clawing, rough sex; and then it was over.

Dean awoke, sore and aching, and _empty_ , but clear-headed.

He checked his phone.

“Hades wept,” he groaned. “Three and a half—nearly four—days, Benny! Never again, you hear me? We’re having pups next heat and the heat after that—and you’re gonna knock me up in the first three rounds both times! And then I’m getting fixed.”

“Whatever you want, _Cher_ ,” Benny said with an indulgent smile.

Dean glared. “Laugh it up, fuzzball,” he grumbled. “You try being on the bottom of a four day marathon of mattress pounding, see how you feel.”

Benny’s smile merely widened. “How about you go and have a nice long soak in the hot tub while I clean everything up?”

Dean conceded that he could perhaps manage that.

Sometime later, they made their way out of the Heat Suite, showered and dressed and blessedly free of any lingering scents that would tell their fellow _weres_ they’d just completed a heat together.

They both smelled thoroughly mated though and the couple received an enthusiastic reception from Sam and Jess who’d been minding Millie, with a little help from Charlie, while Dean and Benny had been confined.

“Congratulations, Dean,” Sam hugged him hard. “I’m so happy for you.”

“Omma!” Millie cried, running to Dean.

He scooped her up in his arms and hugged her tightly.

“I missed you, Omma,” she said. “Uncle Sammy wouldn’t tell me where you were. He just went red and smelled funny when I asked him!”

Oh Luna. Here was another conversation he wasn’t ready for. Dean went and sat down on the sofa with Millie on his lap. Jess excused herself and went to the guest bedroom she’d been staying in and Benny and Sam disappeared into Benny’s study to discuss suddenly urgent ‘Pack-related business’. 

The cowards.

Dean ran a hand across his mouth and thought for a moment.

“So you know how some people can have babies?”

Millie nodded. “Ommas and Mamas and Mommies,” she said.

“Right,” Dean nodded. “So twice a year, Ommas and Mamas go through a special time when their body gets ready to have pups. And when that happens, it’s nice if they have a special alpha to help them. I just had mine and Benny helped me.”

Millie’s eyes became improbably large. “Are you gonna have pups, Omma?”

Dean shook his head. “Not this time. I wasn’t quite ready yet. But I think…probably next time? What do you think? Would you like to be a big sister?”

Millie nodded solemnly. “Oh yes,” she breathed. “Puppies!”

She clapped her hands excitedly.

Dean grinned at her. “You want some milk and cookies?”

When the cowardly alphas and Jess reappeared it was to find Dean and Millie sitting at the kitchen table dunking oreos into tall glasses of milk, Dean listening attentively as Millie gave him a blow-by-blow description of her last few days.

She paused when Benny walked in and frowned at him. “Are you my Papa now?” she asked.

Benny sat down beside her. “Well, _Chere_ , I sure wanna be. Is that okay with you?”

She nodded. “Just make sure Omma has puppies next time, okay?”

Benny’s eyes bugged out and he turned an interesting shade of red and Dean nearly fell off his chair laughing.

Millie didn’t quite understand what was so funny, but she was happy to have made her Omma laugh and pretty soon everyone else joined in too.

“Oh, man,” Dean said finally, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “Your _face_!”

Benny rolled his eyes. “I don’t even wanna know what you told her,” he grumbled.

Dean smiled sappily at his alpha and then he sighed. “So, I guess the honeymoon’s over, huh? We should probably decide what we’re gonna do about You Know Who?”

Sam cleared his throat. “So get this,” he said. “Alastair was staying with Mark Pellegrino…Ruby’s Uncle…while he was in town.”

Dean nodded.

Sam continued. “And a couple nights ago they all went out for dinner at Cain’s Cajun Food. Cain himself came out of the kitchen to talk to them, which, he hardly ever does apparently. Words were had, and, well, the next day, not only was Alastair gone, the whole Pellegrino family was gone too. Just…packed up and left. I dunno what Cain said to them, but it scared the living daylights out of them all.”

Benny grinned. “I imagine Cain told them that if it came down to it, he’d be my second. I guess Nick didn’t fancy his chances against one of the oldest and strongest _weres_ in the world.”

Dean shook his head. Benny and Sam were high-fiving each other, but he _knew_ Alastair. Hades be damned, he wished he didn’t, but he’d spent long enough tied to the douchebag, while he whispered bigoted bullshit in his ear, to know how the alpha thought, and the idea that Dean had done better than him; that Dean had successfully stopped him from getting the things he thought he was entitled to; that wasn’t going to sit well with Alastair.

Deep down, Dean knew that someday, Alastair would come back to haunt then.

In the meantime, though, Dean had a new mate, a new job and a new home. His brother was happy and doing well; his daughter was happy and doing well; and in the not-too distant future, he and Benny would be expanding their family.

And speaking of family, Dean frowned to himself. Son of a bitch. He’d left his baby parked outside the elementary school. She’d been there four days! Where were his keys?

It turned out that Sam had them. At some point during his heat, Benny had snaked them from him and put them through the slot in the Heat Suite’s door so that Sam could go and collect the impala.

Dean glared at both his mate (yeah, that wasn’t getting old any time soon) and his brother.

“You drove baby _unsupervised_?” he said to Sam.

Sam swallowed. “Only to get her home safely.”

“Dean, darlin’,” Benny interrupted. “When do you want to hold the official Pack Alpha Mating Celebration?”

Dean blinked. “The what?”

“The official Pack Alpha Mating Celebration. It’s usually held the weekend after the Pack Alpha mates. And usually, the Pack Alpha-mate organizes it. Or you could get Bela to do it if you wanted.”

Dean frowned. “Hades no. She can help with the boring parts, but if this is to celebrate you and me mating, then I wanna be in charge of it. Don’t wanna end up with some stuffy black tie crap. I want a party! And you,” Dean glared at Benny until he looked suitably chastened. “Don’t you start thinking I’m that easy to derail, just because I’ve got your bite now,” he softened his glare when mention of the bite made Benny look all sappy, and then turned back to his brother.

“She better not have a scratch, you hear me?”

Sam nodded. “She’s fine Dean. Not even an extra speck of dirt.”

Dean grinned and ruffled his brother’s hair.

“So. Mating Party. Hmm.”

Aside from everyone up here, he should probably invite Bobby, Ellen and Jo, Missouri. Maybe even Rufus. Dean allowed himself a small smile. He vaguely recalled having once told Rufus that if he ever found an alpha that didn’t just want submission and nothing else from him, then he’d be the first one he told. He guessed that phone call—and a few others to his nearest and dearest from his childhood—was well overdue.

Benny threw an arm around Dean’s shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss and Dean kissed him back enthusiastically.

Millie giggled and Dean shook off his lingering concerns about what Alastair may do in the future and decided to focus on the here and now. And here and now, he was happier than he’d ever been.

Dean may have started from zero, but he felt like a fairy tale happily ever after was finally within his grasp. For the first time ever, he felt like he genuinely belonged, and he was absolutely sure of one thing; that he and Benny were truly meant to be.

_The End._

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to the mods of this challenge for running this wonderful, fun challenge again. Thank you also for the extension you gave us all, because once again I woefully under-estimated how long it would take me to tell this story! 
> 
> Hope you've enjoyed. :)


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